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ROMANTIC GERMANY 




DANZIG— JOPEN STREET AND ST. MARYS CHURCH 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 



BY 



ROBERT HAVEN SCHAUFFLER 

AUTHOR OF "WHERE SPEECH ENDS" 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY 

HANS HERRMANN, ALFRED SCHERRES, 

KARL O' LYNCH VON TOWN, GERTRUDE WURMB, 

CHARLES VETTER, AND OTTO F. PROBST 




PUBLISHED BY THE CENTURY CO. 
NEW YORK M CM IX 




* v 



^ 



?> 



Copyright, 1908, 1909, by 
The Century Co. 



Published October, 1909 



©CL A 2 5i 2 J 6 



THE DEVINNE PRESS 



/?* 



TO 
MY WIFE 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



I Danzig 3 

n Berlin — the City of the Hohenzol- 

lerns 40 

in Potsdam — the Playground of the 

HOHENZOLLERNS 100 

iv Brunswick — the Town of Tyll 

EULENSP1EGEL ....... 141 

V GOSLAR IN THE HaRZ 184 

VI HlLDESHEIM AND FAIRYLAND . . . .198 

vii Leipsic ........... 236 

viii Meissen 262 

ix Dresden — the Florence of the Elbe . 274 
x Munich — a City of Good Nature . . 300 

xi Augsburg 343 

xii The City of Dreams 358 

Index . 391 

vii 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 

.Danzig — Jopen Street and St. Mary's Church . Frontispiece 

Painted by Alfred Scherres. 

v The Crane Gate 5 

Painted by Alfred Scherres. 

^ The Stock Tower 16 

Painted by Alfred Scherres. 

■The Poggenpfuhl, with St. Peter's Church and the Rathaus 

Tower 22 

Painted by Alfred Scherres. 

The Mottlau and St. John's Church (Winter Evening) . . 30 

Painted by Alfred Scherres. 

vThe Fish Market and "The Swan" . . 35 

Painted by Alfred Scherres. ' 

>(The Brandenburg Gate — the Emperor passes .... 43 

Painted by Karl O'Lynch von Town. 

\ Fountain of Neptune, with Royal Stables and Rathaus 

Tower 43 

Drawn by Karl O'Lynch von Town. 

JThe Old Museum (in the distance), as seen from the base of 

the Monument to Emperor William I 51 

Drawn by Karl O'Lynch von Town. 

N The Bridge of the Elector (Kurfiirsten-Briicke) over the 
Spree, with the river-front of the Royal Castle and 

the Cathedral 55 

Painted by Karl O'Lynch von Town. 

ix 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

TAGE 

i The Cathedral and the Frederick Bridge, from the Circus 

Busch on the north side of the Spree 60 

Painted by Karl O'Lynch von Town. 

^The Janowitz Bridge over the Spree 70 

Painted by Karl O'Lynch von Town. 

>i Palace of the Reichstag, fronting the Konigs Platz ... 75 

Painted by Karl O'Lynch von Town. 

VThe Royal Castle, Charlottenburg, as seen from the 

Gardens 82 

Painted by Karl O'Lynch von Town. 

,In the Tiergarten 82 

Painted by Karl O'Lynch von Town. 

-. Wertheim's Store in the Leipziger-Strasse 87 

Painted by Karl O'Lynch von Town. 

i A Glimpse of Old Berlin (Am Krogl) 87 

Painted by Karl O'Lynch von Town. 

/The Landwehr Canal with the Potsdam Bridge, as seen 

from the Konigin-Augusta-Strasse 97 

Painted by Karl O'Lynch von Town. 

v < The Marble Palace on the Holy Lake 104 

Drawn by Hans Herrmann. 

,( Babelsberg 104 

Drawn by Hans Herrmann. 

Old Potsdam on the Havel 107 

Painted by Hans Herrmann. 

/The Town Castle and the "Petition Linden" Ill 

Painted by Hans Herrmann. 

.The Old Market 118 

Painted by Hans Herrmann. 

X 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Nv Alley in Sans Souci Park 121 

Painted by Hans Herrmann. 

vThe Great Fountain in Sans Souci Park, with the Terraces 

and Palace in the background 126 

Painted by Hans Herrmann. 

, The Statue of the Archer and the Old Mill 131 

Drawn by Hans Herrmann. 

■ View of the Palace of Sans Souci from the Ruinenberg . .136 

Drawn by Hans Herrmann. 

The Ruinenberg, the ruins built by Frederick the Great, 

north of Sans Souci 136 

Drawn by Hans Herrmann. 

VThe Broad Bridge 139 

Painted by Hans Herrmann. 

\fThe Old-Town Market v 150 

Painted by Gertrude Wurmb. 

v 01d Houses in the Reichen-Strasse 155 

Painted by Gertrude Wurmb. 

^n Old Courtyard in Brunswick 168 

Painted by Gertrude Wurmb. 

^Church of St. Catherine and Henry the Lion's Fountain in 

the Hagen Markt 172 

Painted by Gertrude Wurmb. 

\lThe Alte Waage, looking toward St. Andrew's .... 177 

Painted by Gertrude Wurmb. 

<The front of St. Andrew's, as seen from the Weber-Strasse 181 

Painted by Gertrude Wurmb. 

The Kaiserhaus 188 

Painted by Alfred Scherres. 

xi 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

The Brusttuch .194 

Painted by Alfred Scherres. 

Cathedral Cloisters. The Thousand-year Rose-bush . . . 203 

Painted by Alfred Scherres. 

v The Nave of St. Michael's Church 209 

Painted by Alfred Scherres. 

/'The Old-German House" 215 

Drawn by Alfred Scherres. 

The Rathaus (left), Temple House and Wedekind House in 

the Market-Place 221 

Painted by Alfred Scherres. 

The Pillar House in the Andreas-Platz 228 

Drawn by Alfred Scherres. 

The Eckemecker-Strasse 234 

Drawn by Alfred Scherres. 

An Old House in the Nikolai-Strasse 241 

Painted by Karl O'Lynch von Town. 

St. Thomas's from the Burg-Strasse 241 

Painted by Karl O'Lynch von Town. 

The Old Rathaus 248 

Painted by Karl O'Lynch von Town. 

.The New Rathaus from the Promenade-Ring 255 

Painted by Karl O'Lynch von Town. 

On the Pleisse, in the Naundorfchen Quarter 259 

Painted by Karl O'Lynch von Town. 

Meissen from the right bank of the Elbe 266 

Painted by Karl O'Lynch von Town. 

Ascent to the Albrechtsburg 271 

Painted by Karl O'Lynch von Town. 

xii 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGB 

v Church of Our Lady from the Briihl Terrace 278 

Painted by Karl O'Lynch von Town. 

« Porcelain Fair in the New Market, the Church of Our Lady 

on the left 282 

Painted by Karl O'Lynch von Town. 

Court Church and Castle as seen from the Elbe . . .289 
Painted by Karl O'Lynch von Town. 

/Dresden from the left bank of the Elbe, the Queen Carola 
Bridge in the foreground, the old Augustus Bridge in 
the distance 296 

Painted by Karl O'Lynch von Town. 

^Karl's Place, looking toward Karl's Gate, and the Church of 

Our Lady 303 

Painted by Charles Vetter. 

v Church of St. John 311 

Drawn by Charles Vetter. 

. ; Court of the Hofbrauhaus (Royal Brewery) 318 

Painted by Charles Vetter. 

-,The Maximilianeum and the Isar 326 

Painted by Charles Vetter. 

The Church of St. Anna 329 

Painted by Charles Vetter. 

'The Gardens of Nymphenburg 336 

Painted by Charles Vetter. 

The New Rathaus in the middle ground, and the Towers of 

the Church of Our Lady, in the distance 339 

Painted by Charles Vetter. 

The North Portal of the Cathedral 34,5 

Painted by Karl O'Lynch von Town. 

The Ludwigs-Platz and the Fountain of Augustus . . . 350 
Painted by Karl O'Lynch von Town. 

xiii 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

The Jakober-Strasse, with the Jakober-Thor in the distance 355 

Painted by Karl O'Lynch von Town 

The Markus Tower 360 

Etched by O. F. Probst. 

The Rathaus (City Hall), the older part having the Tower 363 

Etched by O. F. Probst. 

Court of the Apotheke 368 

Etched by O F. Probst. 

Portal of the Old Rathaus 371 

Etched by O. F. Probst. 

Fountain in the Kapellen-Platz 378 

Etched by O. F. Probst. 

The Klingen-Gate Tower 381 

Etched by O. F. Probst. 
4 

Am Plonlein — Siebers Gate at the left and Cobolzeller Gate 

at the right 385 

Etched by O. F.Probst. 



XIV 



PREFACE 

In the surfeit of books on Germany one subject has 
been strangely neglected, and that is — the land 
itself. 

Its politics, history, sociology, commerce, and 
science each has a literature of its own. But for the 
latest account in English of Germany's most repre- 
sentative and picturesque towns one must turn either 
to the guide-books or to a rare volume called "Views 
Afoot," written by young Bayard Taylor in the year 
1846. 

To certain readers prejudiced by this mislead- 
ing emphasis it may come as a pleasant surprise 
to learn that Germany still remains the land of the 
Nibelungenlied and of Grimm's Fairy Tales, of 
gnomes and giants, storks and turreted ring-walls, 
of Gothic houses in rows, and the glamour of medie- 
val courtyards. But so it is. One must merely 
know where to look for these things. 

Many of the towns, like Rothenburg, Danzig, and 

xv 



PREFACE 

Brunswick, have preserved almost intact their Old 
World magic, and a touch of real romance is to be 
found as well in almost every one of those larger 
cities which we have been taught to consider hope- 
lessly prosaic. There is a peculiar zest in discovering 
a Krogl or an Auerbach's Keller in such places as 
Berlin and Leipsic, which so many travelers visit un- 
aware of their stores of hidden treasures. It is 
much as though one should chance on a Diirer en- 
graving fluttering about in Broadway. 

In composing this picture, therefore, a few of the 
larger cities were given preference over rural Ger- 
many with its more obvious charms. Nuremberg 
and the Rhine country were naturally omitted as 
they had recently received their share of literary 
attention. And, for the rest, out of an embarrassing 
wealth of material, a group of the choicest was with 
difficulty chosen from among the smaller towns of 
pure romance. 

But places are so much like people that whoever 
makes a book of cities must borrow from the nov- 
elist's art. The present writer has tried to select from 
the many that appealed to him a few city-characters 
so correlated or contrasted as to bring each other into 
relief. He has endeavored not only to keep in mind 
their interrelations, but also to reveal the personality 
of each one as reflected in the character of its build- 

xvi 



PREFACE 

ings, streets, squares, and courts, and of the country 
beyond its walls ; to give a hint of its history, a breath 
of its legend, a suggestion of the quality of its folk 
— their customs and costumes, their beliefs, attain- 
ments, and humors — and thus to lure the traveler 
from his hard-beaten tracks in Italy and France and 
England to the fresh regions of Romantic Germany. 



XYll 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 




DANZIG 

BALTIC fog rolled in from the north as 
my train rolled in from the south, bring- 
ing an ideal hour for the first impressions 
of a city so full of Northern melancholy, 
one so far from the beaten track and so 
romantic, as Danzig. Down a street full of gar- 
goyles and curious stone platforms there loomed 
through the mist- a monstrous church, crowned with 
pinnacles and a huge, blunt tower. 

A gate that seemed like the facade of an Italian 
palace pierced by a triumphal arch opened on a street 
of fascinating old gables, and beyond them rose a 
Rathaus with an exquisite steeple. I passed between 
tall, slim palaces, through the arches of a water-gate, 
and came out by the river, to fill my lungs with a 
sudden draught of ozone and to realize that I was 
almost in the presence of the Baltic. 

3 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

An alcove of the Green Bridge proved the place of 
places in which to modulate one's soul down from the 
shrill key of the twentieth century to the deep, mel- 
low tonality of the Middle Ages. 

Toward the sea swept an unbroken line of roman- 
tic architecture, narrow, sharp-gabled houses inter- 
mingled with towered water-gates, and, last of all, 
the profile of the Krahn Thor, or Crane Gate, Dan- 
zig's unique landmark, its stories projecting one 
beyond another like those of Hildesheim's houses. 
On the island formed by two arms of the Mottlau the 
black and white of half-timbered granaries started 
strongly out of the mist. 

The river bristled with romantic shipping; and as 
I walked the quay, I caught, between gables, the 
glow of the lights of the Lange Markt flushing 
the fog into a rosy cloud the center of which was the 
steeple of the Rathaus. It was as though beauty had 
been given an aureole. 

I turned a corner, and wandered along the other 
shore of the island, past a deserted waterway and a 
strange, crumbling tower called the Milk-can Gate, 
then back again to the Green Bridge. The darkness 
had thickened so that one could no longer distinguish 
the separate house-fronts, but all the lamps along the 
shore had their soft auras of mist, and the surface of 
the water was one delicate shimmer, with strong col- 

4 




THE CRANE GATE 



DANZIG 

umns of light at regular intervals, among which the 
crimson lantern of a passing boat wrought amazing 
effects. 

Where had I known such an evening before? As 
memory wandered idly about the harbor of Liibeck, 
the bridges of Nuremberg, the riversides of Wiirz- 
burg and Breslau, I was flashed in a trice to the 
"Siren of sea-cities," that 

floating film upon the wonder-fraught 
Ocean of dreams, 

and it came to me with a glow of pleasure that this 
place had from of old been called "The Venice of the 
North." 

This, then, was my introduction to Danzig, and I 
never think of it without seeing streets full of high, 
narrow facades melting one into another, gently 
curving streets alive with rich reliefs, statues of 
blurred worthies, and inquisitive gargoyles, the 
blunt, mighty Church of St. Mary looming above 
them like a mountain. I can never see the name of 
Danzig without beholding a dusky waterway lined 
with medieval structures and — strange juxtaposition 
— a jewel of Reformation art with its rosy aureole. 

But it is delightful to remember how, on the fol- 
lowing morning, the city drew aside her veil and 
stood revealed in that fresh depth of coloring found 

7 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

only near the misty seas of the North in such places 
as Liibeck and Wisby, Amsterdam and Bruges. 

Danzig is as easy to compass as Dresden, for the 
most interesting and beautiful buildings have 
crowded themselves about the Church of St. Mary as 
though attracted by a crag of lodestone. The an- 
cient moat and the earthen wall must have had a 
concentrative as well as decorative effect on the city, 
and one can imagine the inward pressure bending 
the longest streets into their present graceful curves. 
A few years ago, alas! these fortifications were de- 
stroyed by the highly socialistic process of shoveling 
the mound into the moat, leaving the High Gate 
shorn of the walls into which it had been originally 
set as the principal entrance to Danzig. 

Seen from the Hay Market outside, where inter- 
esting peasant types swarm among wains of green 
and golden hay, the High Gate composes inevitably 
with its taller neighbors, the Torture Chamber and 
the Stock Tower, or prison. This, like the Langgasser 
Gate, is more a triumphal arch than a city portal. 
With its four genially modeled gables, the Torture 
Chamber recalls the Inquisition, its innocent-sound- 
ing name and its outrageous significance, while the 
Stock Tower compromises between the religious 
aspiration of a Gothic church and the self-conscious 
dignity of a Renaissance town hall. The only hint of 

8 



DANZIG 

its real function is supplied by a stone jailer with a 
ring of keys, who leers from a dormer window at the 
passer-by with a gesture of welcome. The narrow 
court below, through which prisoners were led to the 
red-hot pincers and the rack, is one of the most 
soothing nooks in Danzig, with its. bracketed arcades 
and harmonious gloom, its riot of old lumber, the 
myriad tiny roofs that start out from the tower, and 
its view, framed by three great arches, of the Lang- 
Gasse. 

I did not find the'Langgasser Gate* as charming as 
when its extravagance had been softened by the mist 
of the previous evening ; but the Rathaus steeple was 
even more glorious in the full morning light, and, 
seen from three directions, finished the street vista 
superbly. 

A Rathaus interior is not often inspiring, but here 
were carvings, mosaics, frescos, and furniture of 
extraordinary beauty, tokens of the Renaissance 
relationship between North and South. And it was 
interesting to find in the White Chamber a modern 
historical fresco of Danzig delegates presenting a 
painting of their city to the Venetians in 1601. If 
this old canvas should come to light to-day in some 
private Italian collection, it would be a very fair por- 
trayal of modern Danzig. For in the room sacred to 
the burgomaster hangs a "Tribute Money," painted 

9 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

in 1601, with the Lange Markt* in the background 
virtually as it appears to-day, a neat refutation of 
those pessimists who claim that romantic Germany 
has been "restored" to death. This room and the 
Red Chamber rise to the highest levels of the German 
Renaissance. Between them' winds a unique spiral 
staircase of carved oak. 

Separated from the Rathaus by a narrow street 
and two narrow gables is that most interesting build- 
ing, the Artushof, or Court of Arthur. This was 
built by the medieval' Teutonic Order of Knights 
as a patrician club-house, where were kept alive the 
traditions of King Arthur and his Round Table. 
It is good to remember how the Arthurian le- 
gends penetrated like a sweet savor into these 
terrible lands, how the Knights built as their Cam- 
elot, not many leagues away, the Marienburg, 
which remains the mightiest of German castles; 
and how, when Poland and Brandenburg were 
righting for the prize of fourteenth-century Danzig, 
the Knights came to her rescue, and kept her under 
their protection until she grew strong and beautiful. 

Their first thought was to build this Court of King 
Arthur where, at the sound of a bell, the patricians 
assembled at the great round table to pledge each 
other in the famous local beer they called Joppe, and 
plan for the good of the city while the town pipers 

10 



DANZIG 

made music. Tournaments were sometimes held in 
the Lange Markt outside. The gentlemen rode in 
the order of their seating at the round table. The 
fairest ladies awarded the prizes; and all danced to- 
gether afterward in the great hall. 

To look at the Artushof is to look back through 
the centuries to the two brightest periods of local his- 
tory. The three Gothic windows, fit for the clear- 
story of a cathedral, typify the monumental life of 
the Teutonic Order when Danzig was building the 
Rathaus and the Stock Tower, the Crane Gate and 
the Church of St. Mary; while the portal and the 
gable tell of the proud adventurers who, under the 
protection of Poland, were leading spirits in the 
Hanseatic League, and, while well-nigh the remotest 
of Germans from the scene of the Italian Renais- 
sance, were yet among the most sensitive to its in- 
fluence. 

The hall itself would have befitted King Arthur 
and his knights. Four slender shafts branch out 
into rich vaulting, as though four huge palms had 
been petrified by the magic of Merlin. The art of 
the Artushof was intended rather to amuse than to 
edify, and the decorations seemed like so many 
glorified toys. Models of the ships of Hansa days 
hovered in full sail overhead. The hugest and green- 
est of Nuremberg stoves filled one corner, a piece of 

11 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

pure ornament which had never known the indignity 
of fire. The paneled walls were rilled with curious 
wooden statues and large paintings. I noticed a 
painted Diana about to transfix a stag, which 
started desperately from the wall in high relief. 
A buck with real hide and antlers hearkened 
superciliously to the lyre of a painted Orpheus. But 
the picture that pleased me most was called "The 
Ship of the Church." To my unnautical eye it 
seemed that the Madonna and two popes were trav- 
eling first cabin, a couple of military saints second, 
while humble old Christopher was thrust away into 
the steerage, and microscopic laymen were doing all 
the work. 

Arthur's Court has relaxed its ancient rule against 
"talking shop." In fact, it has become the city ex- 
change. Yet the old atmosphere of leisure and so- 
ciability still hangs about it. A notice states that 
ladies are not allowed on the floor during the hour of 
business. Having spent that hour in Merlin's hall, 
I am able to declare that if the brokers of New York 
would only pattern after their Danzig colleagues, 
their lives would gain in mellowness what they might 
lose in brilliance. Grain seemed the sole commodity 
on the market. The round board of the old knights 
had given place to smaller tables filled with wooden 
bowls of it. I watched the brokers chatting and 

12 



DANZIG 

dreaming away their little hour, sifting the kernels 
idly through their fingers in a delicious dolce far 
niente. Suddenly one group began to buzz with a 
note of American animation. "Now," thought I, 
"they are getting down to business." But as I drew 
near, I heard the most excited bidder saying some- 
thing about "the ideality of the actual." Suddenly 
as I stood marveling, and wishing that the author of 
"The Pit" had been spared to view that paradoxical 
scene with me, the enigma was solved in a flash. It 
was clear that the grain in those curious bowls had 
never felt the contaminating touch of modern bulls 
and bears, of thrashing-machines or modern eleva- 
tors. It had come direct from those 

Long fields of barley and of rye 
That clothe the wold and meet the sky, 
And thro' the field the road runs by 
To many-towered Camelot. 

In this atmosphere of medieval romance I moved 
away, and during my sojourn on the banks of the 
Vistula I inhaled romance with every breath. For 
the lure of Danzig is largely the lure of Gothic and 
Renaissance times; and what is worthier to succeed 
the spirit of medieval knighthood than the spirit of 
the age when Europe was born again? 

An open portal invited me next door into the hall 
of a well-preserved patrician dwelling. It was a 

13 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

typical Renaissance interior. There was a frieze of 
the quaint biblical tiles made in Danzig by refugees 
from Delft, and the furniture, the brilliant brasses, 
the sculptured doors and ceiling, and the stairway 
that wound to a gallery at the farther end, were 
blended in a harmony of refinement that would have 
cheapened most palace halls. 

I stepped out into the Lange Markt and gazed to 
my heart's content on the long lines of Renaissance 
palaces for which Danzig is famous, the styles of 
North and South standing side by side in friendly 
rivalry, and testifying to the cosmopolitanism of that 
great time. In the evening mist along the water-side 
I had received — or thought I had received — vague 
impressions of Venice. Now, as I lingered in a day- 
dream inside the Green Gate, the city still gave 
forth a delicate aroma of Italy; but the scene was 
shifted. Perhaps the change was wrought by the 
suggestion of Lorenzo de Medici's sculptured head 
looking down from one of the house-fronts. At any 
rate, as I enjoyed the Lange Markt through half- 
closed eyes, the three great arches of Arthur's Court 
resolved themselves into the Loggia dei Lanzi; the 
solid, angular body of the Rathaus into the bulk of 
the Palazzo Vecchio; the fountain of Neptune ex- 
panded under my eyes ; the same old flock of wheel- 
ing pigeons filled the air ; and, at a vague glimpse of 

14 




THE STOCK TOWER 



DANZIG 

a blunt and mighty tower looming in the distance, I 
instinctively murmured the name of Giotto. 

In leaving Arthur's Court I had traversed at a 
step the most significant period of local history. The 
Teutonic Order, its work being done, fell on evil 
days, became the "old order," and, jealous of the 
city's growing importance in the Hanseatic League, 
began to oppress it. Once again the old order 
yielded place to the new. Danzig cast off the yoke of 
the Knights, and became the ward of Poland. The 
people had long been under Dutch influence, and 
now their contact with the most light-hearted and 
luxurious of all Slavic races prepared them for the 
cosmopolitan time when their ships should bear to 
Venice the grain of the Northeast and bring home in 
return the glowing spirit of the Italian Renaissance. 

Those were days when the wealth, the aristocracy, 
and the splendor of Danzig were proverbial. The 
merchant assumed the garments and the manners of 
princes. In his Northern isolation he decreed his 
own styles, adopting the ruffs of Italy, the mantles 
of Spain, and the furs of Russia. A Parisian trav- 
eler who happened upon the city in 1635 wrote in 
astonishment of the "ladies who walk about in their 
furs like doctors of the Sorbonne." And another 
complained, a few years later, that "you '11 not leave 
Danzig with a whole skin if you don't address every 

17 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

sailor and small-sulphur-match-peddler as 'My 
Lord.' " 

In preserving the spirit of aristocratic town life in 
the Renaissance, the city has done for North Ger- 
many what Nuremberg has done for South Germany. 
Nuremberg built its houses with greater picturesque- 
ness and variety; Danzig, with greater durability, 
with more unity of style and grouping; and it has 
kept out modern discords more successfully. 

The townsman ordered his dwelling in the same 
lordly spirit in which he ordered his clothes. Brick 
would do for his church, but stone was none too good 
for his house. And these rich facades are almost as 
surprising in this stoneless country as facades of 
silver. 

It is interesting to compare the Northern style 
with the Southern. The Italian tends to horizontal 
lines, graded orders of pilasters, simplicity and no- 
bility of proportion, a classical feeling for the struc- 
tural. The Dutch tends to the vertical, is fond of 
lofty rooms, of sharply peaked gables, of brick 
walls sown full of unstructural stone ornament. 
Legend says that the facade of the Steffen House 
near the Artushof was brought from Italy. It is, 
at any rate, one of the purest Italian palaces in 
Germany. And yet it does not quarrel with the 
Dutch houses near it. The rivalry is friendly, and 

18 



DANZIG 

lends vivacity to the street. It is amusing to see the 
coalition of North and South that resulted when both 
styles simultaneously laid hold of the same building, 
as at Lang-Gasse 37, and in the English House. 

Mottos are the rule over the doors, and they are 
apt to be laconic, like "Als ( Alles) in Got" or "Glo- 
ria Deo Soli." That is the way the townsmen talk — 
laconically, earnestly, to the point. Latin is very 
popular, and the city's motto, "Nee temere nee ti- 
mide," is everywhere. At Topfer-Gasse 23 are these 

lines : 

Hospes pulsanti tibi se mea janua pandet: 
Tu tua pulsanti Pectora pande Deo. 

(Guest, to you when you knock this my portal will open : 
Do you open your heart wide to the summons of God. ) 

And directly opposite the tower of the Church of St. 
Mary a pious chisel of 1558 cut this into the wall: 

Wir bauen hier grosse Hauser und feste, 
Und sind doch fremde Gaeste; 
Und wo wir ewig sollen sein, 
Da bauen gar wenig ein. 

(On palaces we waste our force 
Though here we 're only visitors; 
But where we shall forever be 
Too few build we.) 

The streets are so rich to-day because, as a Polish 
city, Danzig suffered little from the Thirty Years' 

19 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

War, and because it was wise enough to build its 
houses of fireproof materials. But fireproof ma- 
terials are not intimate, friendly things, and in few 
other places do the houses seem so aristocratic and 
aloof as here. Tall, narrow, richly sculptured, they 
shoot upward as though despising the democracy of 
the pavement. 

But even as the dwellings of exclusive Augsburg 
are frescoed into friendliness, here they are saved 
from utter misanthropy by a unique architectural 
feature. For in certain dreamy streets about the 
Church of St. Mary are the remnants of Danzig's 
famous Beischldge, stone porches as wide as the 
house and extending far out upon the pavement, to 
the confusion of modern traffic and to the joy of 
seekers after the picturesque. The steps are flanked 
with carved posts or with huge balls of Swedish 
granite. The balustrades are arabesques of iron, or 
slabs of stone decorated, like Roman sarcophagi, 
with mythological reliefs or with scenes from the 
Old Testament as naive as Delft tiles. Jolly gar- 
goyles still grin from the partition ends in memory of 
the good old times when every townsman lounged on 
his own Beischlag, or his neighbor's, in the cool of the 
day, receiving his tea and his friends. In the Jopen- 
Gasse the effect of these platforms of irregular 
height and width is inimitably genial, and the Frau- 

20 




THE POGGENPFUHL, WITH ST. PETER'S CHURCH AND THE RATHAUS TOWER 



DANZIG 

en-Gasse, where they stretch in unbroken lines, undis- 
turbed by the practical modern world, is a little idyl 
that would be quite impossible to duplicate. The 
Frauen-Gasse is, no doubt, an absolute novelty to the 
porchless European, but the American is somehow 
reminded of old Philadelphia, and how a touch of art 
might have transfigured the poor little front "stoop" 
at home. 

In laying out their city, the people developed a 
truly Latin feeling for composition, and one is con- 
stantly delighted with Florentine effects of vista. 
They thought of their streets as narratives the begin- 
ning of which must be interesting, the end, thrilling. 
Thus the Lang-Gasse begins with a Gothic prison 
and an elaborate portal, and curves gently about, to 
end with a tower that is like "the sound of a great 
Amen." Likewise the Lange Markt runs from the 
rhythmic gables and arches of the Green Gate to the 
Rathaus; and the picturesque battlements of St. 
Peter's send the Poggenpfuhl toward the same noble 
cadence. Even that narrow way known as the 
Kater-Gasse lies between St. Peter's and the triple 
front of Holy Trinity, while the Frauen-Gasse leads 
from a water-gate to the choir of the Church of St. 
Mary, with its high windows, its pinnacles, and its 
crenelated gables. But the finest street vista is the 
view down the Jopen-Gasse. 

2 23 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

At the head of the street lies the arsenal, rioting 
in all the happy excesses of the later Flemish Renais- 
sance. On each side stretch the narrow, aristocratic 
houses, with their Beischlage; and from among the 
gables at the end of the street rises the huge, plain 
facade and tower of the Church of St. Mary. I can 
never look at that pile, half fortress, half house of 
God, without imagining the nave full of worshipers 
ponderously chanting Luther's tremendous hymn, 
"Em* feste Burg ist unser Gott." It is the most 
German thing in Danzig. It is even one of the most 
German things in Germany. For the brick Gothic 
of the Baltic and of Silesia was evolved so indepen- 
dently of foreign influence that it expresses the na- 
tional spirit better than any other architecture. 

The original inhabitants of this corner of the world 
were, in all likelihood, the Goths. And it is amusing 
to imagine their surprise if they could have foreseen 
that a French style would be named, in misplaced 
scorn, after them and that their home would, by a 
freak of chance, become the headquarters of the only 
really German variety of that style. For a church 
like St. Mary's is hardly Gothic in the sense that the 
cathedrals of Cologne and Ratisbon are; but, in the 
sense that the Goths were Germans, it is, strictly 
speaking, the only Gothic. 

The Church of St. Mary is the largest of all Prot- 

24 



DANZIG 

estant churches, equaling Notre Dame in area. And 
it reflects the character of its builders quite as vividly 
as does the cathedral of Paris. Its castle-like walls 
bespeak the military instincts of the North German. 
The huge, plain body and blunt tower symbolize the 
downrightness, the sturdiness, the honest largeness 
of a nature whose lack of polish verges on the coarse. 
The fine proportions tell of his poise. The obvious 
construction, unobscured by detail, reminds one that 
this is the clear-headed country of Schopenhauer and 
of Kant. 

Certain traits in this church are specially charac- 
teristic of the land of the Teutonic Order, such as a 
square choir, aisles level with the nave, and star 
vaulting that reminds one of Arthur's Court and the 
Marienburg. 

Here as everywhere the Baltic architects were little 
concerned to ornament the interiors of their churches. 
They left that to the painter, the wood sculptor, the 
bronze founder, and the artist in wrought-iron. War 
has been kind to St. Mary's, so that it remains a veri- 
table treasure-house of ecclesiastical furniture. And 
a dramatic touch is given by one of Napoleon's can- 
non-balls, which for a century has projected from the 
vaulting— a single, sinister eye looking greedily down 
on the multitude of beautiful and fragile things below. 

The world is indebted to the cool, unfanatical Dan- 

25 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

zigers for saving these relics of popery from the de- 
structive storms of the Reformation, and one recalls 
that Schopenhauer was born almost within the 
shadow of the old walls and must have had some of 
his earliest impressions of the beautiful from the 
paintings and sculptures there. 

In no other German church have I found a more 
engaging group of altarpieces. An added charm 
came with the feeling that the spectacles of the art 
professor had been so busy gleaming elsewhere that 
they had left important things undiscovered here. 
Special privilege allowed me to enter the Blind 
Chapel. The pavement was broken, and the guide 
warned me at every moment not to break through 
into the graves below. The chapel was well named. 
It has no windows ; but in the dim light I made out 
on the wings of an altar two paintings of great 
beauty, at the same time sweet and virile, as though 
Stephan Lochner and Memling had been fused. The 
guide murmured vaguely of the school of Kalkar, 
which I could readily associate with the other four 
panels. But only a great master could have created 
that "St. John" and that "St. Helena." Whose hand 
had done them? For a moment I prayed to be a 
German art professor, with time and erudition 
enough and spectacles sufficiently potent to solve that 
enticing problem. 

26 



DANZIG 

The next moment my prayer had a perverse an- 
swer; for in the chapel of the Rheinhold Fraternity 
another problem altar came to light. "All Flemish," 
said the guide. And in the tender, delicious humor 
and sympathy of the wooden reliefs from the life of 
the Virgin I could feel the hand of Van Wavere. 
But whenever I gazed at the saints of the outer 
panels, the thought of a great master persisted. For 
a layman few things are more futile or more exciting 
than such speculations. But I am sure that these 
neglected masterpieces will come into their own when 
travelers begin to realize that they must not miss 
Danzig. 

The church teems with other interesting altars, and 
the chief of them is also the chief work of art in the city. 

Hans Memling's "Last Judgment" is well known 
in reproduction, but speech is like an under-exposed 
negative when it tries to give the contrast of the 
Lord's dull scarlet robe with the liquid bronze armor 
of Michael, who is weighing the sons of men in a pair 
of scales. Is it a subtle interpretation of Teutonic 
physical ideals that the short of weight are cast into 
the flaming pit, while their corpulent brothers are 
started toward heaven's late-Gothic portal ? At any 
rate, I found Low Country humor in the curtsies of 
the blessed to that high official St. Peter, their 
evident reluctance to pose thus in "the altogether," 

27 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

and their eagerness to slip into their heavenly robes. 
This altar was painted in Bruges for a representative 
of the Medici, and was destined for a Florentine 
church. It had actually started for Italy in a Bur- 
gundian galley when it was captured by a cruiser of 
Danzig and presented to St. Mary's, where it stayed, 
despite the threats and wheedlings of Pope Six- 
tus IV. 

The fabulous vies with the beautiful in the atmo- 
sphere of this old church. It is said that the maker 
of the mechanical clock was blinded by the burgo- 
master, so that he might not make another for the 
rival city of Liibeck. In a chapel pavement I came 
upon another myth. Here a child was buried that 
struck its mother, and died soon after; and the five 
small holes that I saw in the stone floor were made by 
the little dead fingers reaching up from the grave for 
forgiveness. These are good specimens of the grue- 
someness of Baltic legends. But the guide told a 
gentler one in All Saints' Chapel, pointing out a 
stone that hung by a cord : 

"Once upon a time a monk was hurrying home 
with a loaf of bread. 'Give me what is under your 
robe,' cried a beggar-woman. 'I starve.' 

" 'It is only a stone to throw at the dogs,' returned 
the monk. And, sure enough, when he came to look, 
the loaf had turned to stone. There it hangs." 

28 




THE MOTTLAU AND ST. JOHN'S CHURCH. (WINTER EVENING) 



DANZIG 

Besides its altars and legends St. Mary's Church 
owns priceless treasures of gold and silver, old ivories 
and precious stones. It has wonderful reliquaries 
and manuscripts, Byzantine and Romanesque and 
Gothic embroideries, and the finest collection of 
church vestments in Germany. But in money the 
church is so poor that its beautiful things are fast 
being ruined for lack of proper attention. It is a 
worse case of poverty and neglect than that of the 
notorious cathedral at Worms. 

Among the other churches, I preferred St. Peter's, 
with its picturesque tower ; and St. Catharine's, with 
its interesting pulpit and font and its noble west 
front. But the best thing about St. Catharine's was 
a little stream called the Radaune, which ran under 
its walls. It made an island close at hand, filled with 
grass and flowers and a Gothic mill, put up five hun- 
dred years ago by the Teutonic Order, still grinding, 
under its vast expanse of tiles, the sort of grain that 
brokers dream over in the Artushof . It seemed to 
me the most patriarchal of buildings, and the Na- 
poleonic cannon-ball in its side added to its dignity. 
The brook, with its flowering island and hoary mill, 
made a picture that would have seemed unreal in a 
city less romantic. 

I spent a few moments with the woodbined walls, 
the font-railing, and the perfect vaulting of St. 

31 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

John's, but after the gloom of so many church-in- 
teriors, it was good to turn a while from the streets, 
the tall gables of which conspired to shut out the 
light. 

I struck east through the ancient, double-bastioned 
Crane Gate, and came out suddenly into the sunshine 
and vivacious life of the water-front. For the time I 
had forgotten about Danzig history, but a whistled 
melody floating up from the river brought it back 
with a rush. For I realized all at once that the 
tune was part of a Chopin polonaise, and that this 
scene had once been for two centuries the port of 
Poland. 

The port of Poland! The words suggested the 
famous "sea-coast of Bohemia." And I began to 
wonder if this very region were not the nearest mun- 
dane approach to Shakspere's enchanted bourne. 
The fancy came lightly but it seemed worthy a sec- 
ond thought. Shakspere had borrowed the plot and 
the geography of "A Winter's Tale" from a novel 
by Greene, published only nineteen years after Dan- 
zig became a part of Poland.. The port had long 
been familiar to English sailors and was beginning 
then to trade with Sicily, the scene of the story. Now 
when the romantic fact became known that the Slavic 
people of Central Europe had at last a seaboard of 
their own, what would be more natural than for a 
novelist to use the region as a background, confusing 

32 



DANZIG 

two sister nations that are to this day often con- 
fused ? 

Touched by the glamour of such speculations it is 
no wonder that the Long Bridge was fascinating, 
even in the clarity of noon, with only a suspicion of 
shadow on it. Unlike other bridges, the Long 
Bridge runs conservatively along the river-bank, con- 
tent to have its long melody of narrow, peaked 
gables rhythmically marked by the massive, recurrent 
chords of gate-towers. Unamphibious, it keeps the 
land without aspiring to the granaries on the other 
shore, which used to hold four million bushels of 
Polish and Silesian grain in the days before the tariff 
destroyed the river trade, and the siege of 1813 de- 
stroyed the most characteristic of the buildings. 
Their finest remaining example is the "Gray Goose," 
the noble proportions of which speak of the wealth 
and taste of former days. The granaries still bear 
such old names as Golden Pelican, Little Ship, 
Whale, Milkmaid, and Patriarch Jacob. 

Although the old town will never regain the 
prestige of the time when it was one of the chief com- 
mercial centers of the medieval world, yet it does a 
thriving business to-day in Prussian beet-sugar, 
English coal, American oil, and Swedish iron. And 
it is still famous for its liqueurs, one of which inspired 
the student song "Krambambuli." The German 
navy was born in the shipyards at the mouth of the 

33 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

Mottlau; and of late beautiful old Danzig has been 
threatening to become a factory town and send her 
sweetness and romance up in smoke. For she is al- 
ready manufacturing steel, glass, chemicals, ma- 
chines, and weapons, and has founded a polytechnic 
school. 

It was good to dismiss such thoughts and step into 
a rude ferry-boat that showed no symptoms of twen- 
tieth-century progress. I paid a single pfennig to a 
boy, who fished a chain from the water, hitched him- 
self to it, and walked me across to the Bleihof , where 
waterways lured in four different directions. I grew 
fond of that ferry, its ragged official, its rough, sim- 
ple passengers, and fell into the regular habit of 
being walked to the Bleihof at dusk to watch through 
a maze of masts and ropes the color fading from the 
western sky. The belfry of St. John's would darken 
into one of Rothenburg's matchless wall-towers. One 
by one the lights of the opposite shore would throw 
wavering yellow paths across to beckon me back. 

A little below the Crane Gate squats an old, round 
tower called the "Swan," which wears a sharp-peaked 
dunce-cap of red tiles. It is a pathetic reminder of 
the Teutonic Order's final attempt to keep Danzig 
German ; for when the citizens seized the Crane Gate 
and fortified it against them, the Knights began this 
round tower near their castle, saying : 

34 



DANZIG 

Bauen sie den Krahn, 

So bauen wir den Schwan. 

(And if they build the Crane, 
Why, we shall build the Swan.) 

The castle vanished with the order, and the Swan 
to-day is smothered breast-high in small houses, the 
smallest of which testifies to the cosmopolitanism of 
its tarry guests by the sign "Sta&t London" 

Near the Fish Market, where the little Radaune 
rushes with a loud noise into the Mottlau, the quay 
has been prettily christened "Am Brausenden Was- 
ser" ("By the Roaring Water"). This is the favor- 
ite haunt of longshoremen, sailors, and the famous 
Danzig sack-carriers, herculean figures with their 
wide blue pantaloons and their swathed calves. And 
beside the quay belongs a flotilla of dusky fishing- 
boats, draped with many-colored sail-awnings and 
with funnel-shaped nets that hang drying from the 
tips of the masts. 

Before parting from a city to which I have grown 
attached, I like to stand on one of its high places and 
see in one. sweeping glance what it is that I am leav- 
ing. It is like gripping a friend's hand and looking 
him square in the eye. 

Toil and twenty-five pfennigs was the price of 
climbing the tower of the Church of St. Mary, and I 

37 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

grew grateful that it had remained blunt and sturdy 
like its people. But I should have been willing to 
toil on indefinitely; for I had seen splendid sights 
from the steeples of Ulm and Munich, of Mayence 
and Strassburg, but never in Germany a panorama 
to equal this. 

A little to the south the exquisite Rathaus steeple 
was a fellow-aspirant, and one could almost make 
out the gilt features of its royal weathercock — Sigis- 
mund of Poland — as the wind twirled him about, and 
count the false jewels in his crown. Beneath rose 
the pinnacled back of the Artushof and the fine 
f acades of the Lange Markt, where I had dreamed of 
Florence ; beyond them a long line of granaries gave 
proof of the hidden Mottlau. Farther away, over a 
sea of fantastic roofs, was St. Peter's crenelated 
tower, and beyond it the fields flowed on to the dis- 
tant spire of St. Albert's and rolled upward in gentle 
undulations to a ridge that swung westward, a back- 
ground for the picturesque Stock Tower. 

Everywhere was a crowd of entrancing old gables 
interspersed with the dusky red of well-weathered 
tiles. Northward was spread a ruddy expanse of 
church roofs, and behind them swung in noble curves 
the final reaches of the Vistula, fresh from the lands 
of Krakow and Warsaw; while beyond the pinnacles 
of the Church of St. Mary itself and the tranquil 

38 



DANZIG 

streets in its shadow, curving past romantic gate- 
towers and the woodbined walls of St. John's, the 
Mottlau wound to join the Vistula and seek the 
ocean, whose breakers dashed a league away, a 
mighty gulf of grayish blue, flecked by one immacu- 
late sail. 



39 




II 



BERLIN-THE CITY OF THE 
HOHENZOLLERNS 

ROM any account of the romantic cities 
of Germany, Berlin must not be ex- 
cluded, if for no other reason than be- 
cause it is so unromantic. It is the 
positive degree by which to gage such a 
comparative as Munich, such a superlative as Roth- 
enburg. It is the gray sky in which the rainbow 
gleams the fresher. And its own spot or two of 
real color breaks this background with a vivid 
force of contrast that may never be enjoyed in the 
cities of pure romance. 

The rare Berlin sun bathed Unter den Linden and 
wrought happy effects among the columns of the 
Brandenburg Gate, lovely in its Attic repose against 
the May foliage of the Tiergarten. In the guard- 
house on each hand the guard was undergoing in- 
spection. Each private came stiffly up to his officer 
and whirled stiffly about, to show that he was un- 

40 



BERLIN 

contaminated by the great, dirty human world 
beyond the palings. But just as a spot was found 
on an unfortunate leg, a trumpet rang out from the 
Friedens-Allee, the watch before the gate yelled 
something in a superhuman voice, the officers, with 
protruding eyes, leaped hysterically through the 
door, and the soldiers tumbled after, presenting 
arms to the cloud of dust in the wake of the Em- 
peror's automobile, which had whizzed, at the Em- 
peror's speed limit, through the royal entrance. 

The soldiers* turned dejectedly back to inspection. 

"Swine-hounds!" cried a pale officer, "why 
could n't you do that quicker?" And even the by- 
standers eyed them with reproach; for every citizen 
in the crowd had been a soldier himself, and knew 
that he could have managed things better. 

The people were still glowing with the excite- 
ment and pleasure of having seen the Emperor. I 
had caught a glimpse of the familiar face as it 
flashed by— the keen eyes that seemed to look into 
the soul of every one of us, their hint of coldness 
and hardness corrected by the kindly lines about 
them; the straight, frank nose; the morose mouth, 
artificially enlivened by the grin of upturned mus- 
taches, like the enforced jocularity of "The Man 
Who Laughs"; the determined, energetic, military 
jaw. This typical Hohenzollern face, coming and 

41 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

going like an apparition, suddenly lent fresh inter- 
est to a place which I had always found interesting. 
For, as I drifted down "the Lindens" with the 
crowd, the question arose whether this modern, mili- 
tant city, with its zest in commerce and diplomacy, 
in art and science, were not in many senses an em- 
bodiment of the Hohenzollern character. 

A Frenchman once declared that Prussia was born 
from a cannon-ball, as an eagle is from an egg. 
And indeed it would be hard to find another Ger- 
man city with so few old buildings as Berlin and so 
little atmosphere. A Strassburg cathedral, a mar- 
ket-place out of Danzig, a row of Hildesheim houses, 
or a Breslau Rathaus, would be as out of place here 
as in an arsenal. Most of the Berlin architecture has 
as much color as a squadron of battle-ships in war- 
paint, and the little glamour to be found here is 
almost as well hidden as a pearl in a pile of oyster- 
shells. The city fairly bristles with weapons and 
militancy. Its statues, when they are not of mounted 
warriors with swords, or of standing warriors with 
spears, tend toward such subjects as Samson plying 
the jaw-bone of an ass, or hounds rending a stag. 
Painting, too, has been drafted into the service, and 
one sees so many military pictures in the public build- 
ings that even the absurd portrait by Pesne of Fred- 
erick the Great in the Palais is a relief. For there 

42 



r 




THE BRANDENBURG GATE— THE EMPEROR PASSES 




FOUNTAIN OF NEPTUNE, WITH ROYAL STABLFS AND RATHAUS TOWER 



BERLIN 

Frederick, aged three, is only beating a drum, al- 
though a lance, a club, and what looks like a pile of 
cannon-balls, appear in the background. 

But sometimes, when surfeited with this martial 
over-emphasis, I think of the terrible frontiers of 
Prussia and how well she has guarded them, reflect- 
ing that, if she had beaten her swords into plow- 
shares, I should not now be enjoying the gallery or 
the Tiergarten, the Opera or the Krogl; and then 
I grow more reconciled to Berlin's eternal bristling. 

Despite its many repellent qualities, however, 
Berlin has always had for me on every return an 
indefinable thrill in store ; indefinable because I have 
never been able to account for its strange charm, its 
emotional appeal, as one accounts for the lure of 
other places. Reason declares it one of the least 
charming of cities, and yet we are enticed. The 
truth is that its genius loci, like its reigning ruler, 
is not to be gaged by ordinary standards. 

Unter den Linden, the broadest street in Europe 
save one, is the principal stage for the drama of 
Berlin's brilliant and cosmopolitan life. Dorothea's 
unluxuriant linden-trees extend no farther than 
Rauch's monument to Frederick the Great, though 
Unter den Linden goes marching on, despite the 
anomaly, to the Castle Bridge. The hero, infor- 
mally sitting his charger in his cocked hat and with 

8 45 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

his trusty crooked stick, seems to dominate the situ- 
ation as easily as in the stirring days of the eigh- 
teenth century. "In this monument," Rodenberg 
once said, "pulsates something of the monstrous 
energy of the Prussian state." And the Opern- 
Platz is in character with its leading figure. Car- 
ry le wrote of him that "he had no pleasure in dreams, 
in party-colored clouds and nothingnesses" ; and cer- 
tainly there is little now before him to offend his 
sensibilities. There is nothing party-colored about 
this architecture. A bronze Frederick sits between 
a plain brown university and a plain brown palace; 
a severe brown Opera, embellished with fire-escapes, 
confronts an austere gray guard-house; while far- 
ther along, an angry arsenal bullies two sad-looking 
palaces, likewise in brown, all solidly built and with 
no unseemly levity. 

One imagines the first emperor with his grand- 
son in the famous corner window of his Palais, where 
he always stood to see the guard relieved, watching 
with sympathetic eyes the students (whom he was 
fond of calling his "soldiers of learning") in the 
university across the way, that souvenir of Prussia's 
darkest hour, when, in 1809, she had lost to France 
everything west of the Elbe. In that crisis a hand- 
ful of scholars approached Frederick William III 
with their project, and the enthusiastic king ex- 

45 



BERLIN 

claimed: "That is good! that is fine! Our land 
must make up in spiritual what it has lost in physical 
strength.'' In this spirit such men as Fichte and 
Schleiermacher, aided by Wilhelm von Humboldt, 
founded Berlin University. And it is no wonder 
that, with a truly Hohenzollern rapidity and acquisi- 
tiveness, it has within a century gained 9000 students 
and 500 teachers, and gathered such stars to its 
crown as Mommsen, Curtius, Helmholtz, Banke, 
and Hegel. Its school of medicine is particularly 
strong, and attracts the young doctors of all nations, 
especially Americans. For Germany leads the 
world in theoretical, America in applied, medicine. 
But, in spite of our practical bent, Berlin possesses 
in the Virchow Hospital the most perfect institution 
of its kind, a group of thirty buildings built on the 
new pavilion system, which puts our leading hos- 
pitals to shame. 

There is one local institution, though, untouched 
as yet by the imperial love of progress. I remember 
once crossing the North Sea with a Berlin student, 
and we fell to comparing our respective universities. 

"There is, anyway, one point," he argued, "where 
we go far ahead of you. I talk of our library sys- 
tem. Yours is not to be mentioned,— how say you? 
—yours is not to call in the same expression with 
ours for celerity. Why, if you will order a book 

47 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

in the morning at eight, you may not infrequently 
obtain it before three in the same afternoon!" This 
claim I afterward verified. But American methods 
will prevail in the new building which is being built 
next to the university. The old library,, with its 
spirited, curved f acade, is one of the last monuments 
to the baroque spirit in Germany. 

The opera-house was built by Frederick the Great 
as the beginning of a huge "Forum Fridericanum," 
a Prussian counterpart to the gigantic Saxon scheme 
of which the Zwinger Palace at Dresden was in- 
tended to be the mere foreshadowing. It is the home 
of that art for which the Hohenzollerns have always 
shown the most understanding, one nowhere else so 
fully represented as at Berlin— the national art of 
music. The Opera, the orchestra of which ranks 
second in the land, divides with the Royal Theater 
an annual subsidy of $225,000. Richard Strauss 
is one of the conductors, but even he has less author- 
ity there than the Emperor, who supervises in per- 
son the slightest details of execution and setting. A 
larger opera-house is soon to be built on the Konigs- 
Platz. 

Berlin has an embarrassment of musical riches. 
Besides the excellent performances of the Philhar- 
monic Orchestra, which may be heard for ten cents, 
the city averages twenty classical concerts daily 

48 



BERLIN 

during the season. There one may hear rare works, 
seldom given elsewhere, and the breathless audiences 
are filled with an almost religious fervor of atten- 
tion. They realize what we do not, that the hearer 
is almost as important a factor in the making of 
music as the performer. 

The Zeughaus, or military museum, is the most 
Prussian thing in Prussia, and some one has said 
that this building is to Berlin what its cathedral is 
to an ordinary city. The f acade is alive with spirited 
sculpture, and Schluter modeled the beautiful masks 
of dying warriors inside. Here is one of the most 
brilliant and complete collections of armor and 
weapons in the world, while the best human touch is 
given by Napoleon's pathetic little old hat, guarded 
by sixty-eight wax soldiers, dressed in every Prus- 
sian uniform since the time of the Great Elector. 
The Hall of Fame is filled with bronze busts of Prus- 
sian men of valor, and with appropriate paintings 
of better quality than the usual battle-picture. The 
ruling passion of the Hohenzollern rages here ad 
libitum, and the impression is not weakened after 
crossing the Castle Bridge, which the Berliners call 
"The Bridge of Dolls," after its eight marble groups 
illustrating the education of the warrior, — poor 
things, all of them,— cold imitations of the cold 
Thorwaldsen. 

49 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

The atmosphere of the Lustgarten is profoundly 
martial. In the center towers Frederick William 
III on his war-charger, gazing toward the castle, 
whereon stand figures of the late Emperor Fred- 
erick III as Mars, and of his father William I as 
Jupiter. Beneath their glances* five armed princes 
of Orange guard the terrace, and two men in verdi- 
gris struggle with wild horses at the portal. In a 
lamentable position on the bank of the Spree looms 
Begas's monument to William I, the foremost among 
Berlin's military sculptures. Four delirious lions, 
crouching on heaps of arms, snarl at the four cor- 
ners ; colossal figures intended to represent War and 
Peace sprawl unhappily on the side steps, and the 
whole is surmounted by a group which must have 
suggested to Saint- Gaudens the idea for his Sher- 
man monument. The helmeted Jhero of Sedan is 
led by a Victory whose two sisters drive quadrigas 
on the colonnade at each side — all in all an impress- 
ive and ferocious sight. Northward lies the cold, 
hard, hideous cathedral. Near it, topping Schinkel's 
noble Old Museum, more wild horses struggle with 
wild men, while, beside the beautiful, serene flight 
of steps, an Amazon and a warrior, both mounted, 
are forever trying to transfix a tiger and a lion, the 
latter by a sculptor of the savage name of Wolff. 
And finally, looking down the vista of Unter den 

50 



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3 2 







BERLIN 

Linden, that reach so characteristic of the far-see- 
ing, purposeful HoKenzollerns, the clear-sighted 
catch a glimpse, past Frederick the Fighter, of a 
third quadriga and a fourth Victory, sublime on the 
Brandenburg Gate. 

Save for some dim frescos in the porch of the 
Old Museum and for the green cupola of the castle, 
the Lustgarten suffers from Berlin's chronic dearth 
of color — a dearth that has driven the makers of 
cheap postal-cards to the desperate expedient of 
printing the black dome of the cathedral red and 
the gray steeple of the Memorial Church sky- 
blue. 

The Hohenzollern fondness for mottos finds vent 
on the cathedral and the castle, while the statues of 
the princes of Orange and counts of Nassau stand 
there dauntless and beautiful, like true Prince- 
tonians, over such sentiments as "Nunc aut num- 
quam," "Patriae patrique," and "Saavis tranquillus 
in undis." These latest additions to Berlin's bronze 
elect are well conceived and executed, with more of 
mellowness and atmosphere than one meets with in 
earlier Berlin sculpture. They were evidently mod- 
eled with the inner eye turned toward King Arthur 
and his blessed iron company at Innsbruck. 

The finest views of the castle are from the Burg- 
Strasse, across the river. Seen from a point oppo- 

53 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

site the cathedral, the northern facade of the 
venerable Hohenzollern home assumes an austere 
but very real beauty, lightened by the grace of the 
ivy-clad Apotheke, with its oriel. It takes time to 
appreciate this building, but it wears like a true- 
hearted, steadfast Berliner after you have learned 
to discount his failings. Sometimes the plain, east- 
ern facade is very friendly beyond the throng of 
barges along its water-front; and even the royal 
stables are a goodly sight from here on a sunny 
morning, topped by the Gothic spire of the Church 
of St. Peter. 

But best of all is the view in June from 'the Elec- 
tor's Bridge, with the bit of tree-embowered garden 
at the southeastern corner of the castle, the vines 
clothing the ancient walls to the very top, and trail- 
ing over the embankment into the water; with the 
monumental columns and portals of the southern 
facade, and the green cupola coming out slightly 
above the mass with an inimitable effect, while Nep- 
tune's Fountain in the square throws rainbow mist 
about his glistening water-folk, and the Great Elec- 
tor in bronze rides with a true Roman nobility on 
his bridge, coolly satisfied with the outlook. This is 
Berlin's greatest monument, and it seems almost a 
part of the castle itself, for both were largely the 
creations of the greatest of Prussian architects, 

54 





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BERLIN 

Andreas Schliiter, and both are among the finest 
examples of baroque art in Prussia. 

There is a suspicion of legend hanging about this 
bridge, for the story goes that Schliiter, on discover- 
ing that he had forgotten to fit the Great Elector's 
horse with shoes, jumped into the Spree and was 
seen no more. But, in spite of this defect in equip- 
ment, old Frederick William, every New Year's 
Eve, jumps his horse over the heads of the fettered 
slaves and rides as light as a shadow through the 
city to find how the seed of his sowing has thriven 
and how the young Hohenzollerns have been up- 
holding the family record. 

In 1750, when Frederick the Great had finished 
his new cathedral, the bones of all his ancestors since 
Joachim II had to be shifted from the ancient vaults 
to the new. "Frederick, with some attendants, wit- 
nessed the operation," writes the historian Preuss. 
"When the Great Elector's coffin came, he made 
them open it; gazed for some time in silence on the 
features, which were perfectly recognizable, laid his 
hand on the long-dead hand, and said, 'Messieurs, 
celui-ci a fait de grandes chosesf How like the 
famous scene at Potsdam a few decades later, when 
Napoleon stood by Frederick's leaden coffin, say- 
ing, "If this one were alive, I should not now be 
here." 

57 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

The castle was begun in 1443 by Frederick Iron- 
tooth, the second Hohenzollern elector, but the old- 
est remaining part, the round tower near the Elec- 
tor's Bridge, called "The Green Hat," was built by 
Joachim II in 1538. 

The interior is not enlivening. You ascend a 
long, inclined plane of brick called the Wendelstein, 
and shift into felt overshoes, wherein you shuffle 
through an interminable line of flashy festal cham- 
bers. There is the Red Eagle Room, with its 
wooden replicas of the silver melted up by Frederick 
the Great in his dire need ; the Knights' Room, with 
a chandelier beneath which Luther stood at the Diet 
of Worms; the Room of the Black Eagle; the Room 
of Red Velvet; the White Hall; and so forth. The 
only unoccasional paintings in evidence are a few 
third-rate Italians outside the White Hall, and 
these, as the guide declared, are soon to come down. 
The only old masters are two Vandykes, which look 
quite appalled in the barbarous wastes of the pic- 
ture-gallery. And one longs for a glimpse of the 
famous Watteaus, hidden away in the Emperor's 
private suite. 

There are other views from the Burg-Strasse 
almost as engaging as those of the castle. It is good 
to stand near the William Bridge and see, beyond 
the flapping green eagles of the Frederick Bridge, 

58 




THE CATHEDRAL AND THE FREDERICK BRIDGE FROM THE CIRCUS BUSCH ON THE 

NORTH SIDE OF THE SPREE 



BERLIN 

the National Gallery riding high above its foliage, 
which allows a glimpse of the impressive double 
stairway and the warm browns of the Corinthian 
facade. 

It is a startling adventure to find a barely toler- 
able view of the cathedral, a building which, as 
Lubke declares, "looks as if it had been taken from 
a box of toys." This welcome experience did not 
come to me until my sixth visit to Berlin, and even 
then I was guided by a painting of Alfred Scherres, 
seen on the way. But the painter had undeniably 
found a spot beside the Circus Busch where it is 
pleasant to linger at twilight or on a misty autumn 
morning. 

In the foreground, on a flotilla of roofed-over 
barges, are the lively colors and sounds and the 
sweet odors of a pear market. Across the dusky, 
sparkling Spree the tree-fringed colonnade of the 
National Gallery leads the eye to the rising and fall- 
ing rhythm of the Frederick Bridge, whereunder the 
river winds, gray and gleaming, past the vivacious 
cornice of the stock exchange. And above the flow- 
ing lines of the bridge rises, with its repulsive details 
mercifully hidden by the mist, the huge, dark dome 
of the cathedral, really noble and impressive for 
once, and composing finely with the cupola of the 
castle. 

61 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

To remember that the cathedral cost almost 
$3,000,000 and covers a larger area than Cologne 
minster, and then to look at the cathedral, is an 
experience that makes the heart sick. True, it ex- 
presses in a way the present character of Berlin — its 
cold asperity and self -consciousness. But one won- 
ders whether a beautiful church in its place might 
not be doing more to make the city human and lov- 
able. It was erected between 1894 and 1906 to take 
the place of the former pitiful little cathedral, which 
possessed no architectural distinction, and was sadly 
dwarfed by the majesty of the castle on the one hand 
and of the Old Museum on the other. It is sup- 
posed to express the present Emperor's architectural 
taste; for it is said that he made many changes in 
the plans, and signed them "William, architect." 

One turns away with relief to watch the children 
playing about the great red granite basin in the 
Lustgarten, and to marvel at the costumes of the 
Spreewald nurses — the short, scarlet, balloon skirt 
overspread by a snowy apron. There is a mere pre- 
tense of sleeves, and the gay neck-cloth is set off by 
a brave, triangular spread of linen head-dress, 
fringed five inches deep. 

The museums of Berlin fortunately show few 
traces of the influence of the Hohenzollern taste in 
art. For they have as their Director- General Dr. 

62 



BERLIN 

Wilhelm Bode, whose fine feeling and determined 
will have here been almost supreme. Thirty years 
ago they were poverty-stricken, but the genius of 
Bode has made them one of Berlin's chief glories; 
and that is true not only of the art collections, but 
also of the Agricultural Museum, the Arts and 
Crafts, the Costume, Ethnological, Hohenzollern, 
Marine, Mining, Natural History, Postal, and Pro- 
vincial museums. 

The statues of the Old Museum consist chiefly of 
late Roman sculpture of no special importance, but 
"The Praying Boy," an early Greek bronze, would 
be a worthy companion to the most famous statues 
in Munich's Glyptothek. Here are superb collec- 
tions of antique gold and silver, of Greek and 
Roman gems and cameos, vases, and terra-cotta 
statuettes. 

A passage leads across the street to the New Mu- 
seum, a homely building devoted mainly to Egyptian 
art and plaster casts. But its print collection is 
the richest and best arranged in Germany, and par- 
ticularly strong in the works of Diirer and Rem- 
brandt. Best of all is the set of Botticelli's illustra- 
tions to the "Divina Commedia," so vividly described 
by Arthur Symons in "Cities of Italy." 

In the National Gallery, Hohenzollern influence 
becomes apparent in the prominence of huge mili- 

63 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

tary scenes and royal portraits. But, with all its 
faults, the collection ranks next to those of Munich 
and Dresden as an exhibit of modern German paint- 
ing. It is rich in Menzel and Bocklin, in Defregger 
and Lenbach and Marees; while, of the younger 
generation, Kuehl, Von Uhde, Leibl, Hans Herr- 
mann, Skarbina, and Liebermann are well repre- 
sented. The sculpture stands far behind the paint- 
ing, but Max Klinger's "Amphitrite" is a work in 
colored marbles that takes rank with his Beethoven 
in Leipsic. 

It was an odd coincidence that the altar of Perga- 
mon should have been unearthed by a German and 
sent to found a Pergamon Museum in warlike Ber- 
lin. For the frieze depicting the battle of the gods 
and the giants is not only our most nearly complete 
relic of Greek sculpture, a worthy mate to the Elgin 
Marbles, but it is also our fiercest piece of ancient 
plastic fighting. 

The Kaiser Friedrich Museum should rather be 
called the Bode Museum, for it is a monument to 
the genius of its director. A few weeks before the 
day set by the Emperor for its official opening, Dr. 
Bode was taken seriously ill. But from his bed, 
with the aid of photographs and water-colors, he 
actually directed the furnishing and decoration of 
the entire building, the hanging of the pictures, and 

64 



BERLIN 

the arrangement of the sculpture, finishing his task 
within the time appointed. It is due to him that 
the gallery ranks third in Germany and that it is the 
first in equipment and arrangement. Indeed, among 
the collections of the world it is second only to Lon- 
don's National Gallery in the balance and complete- 
ness of all the schools of painting. Bode's idea of 
placing Renaissance sculpture among the pictures 
is brilliant, and is being wisely adopted in other 
galleries. 

Space allows a mere word of description. The 
most important works of the old Netherlandish 
schools are the famous Ghent altarpiece by the Van 
Eycks, and the "Nativity" by Van der Goes; of 
the old German school, Holbein's portrait of 
Gisze and Durer's of Holzschuher, two of the 
best known of all German pictures. With their 
Fra Angelicos, Botticellis, Signorellis, Masaccios, 
and Da Forlis the elder Italian schools are more 
complete than the Renaissance, and more character- 
istic of the serious, scholarly Prussian collectors; 
but the Renaissance boasts four Raphaels, the "For- 
narina" of Del Piombo, a masterpiece of Del Sarto, 
Leonardo's "Ascension," and marvelous portraits 
by Giorgione and Titian. The later Netherlandish 
schools are specially rich in Rubens and Vandyke. 
Here are the largest collections of Rembrandt and 

65 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

Hals outside of St. Petersburg and Haarlem ; while, 
among the Spanish canvases, are Murillo's most sat- 
isfying religious work and a famous Velasquez por- 
trait. The collection of medieval and Renaissance 
sculpture is the most complete of its kind in the 
country. 

This gallery stands at the head of the Spree 
Island, and on two of its three sides the windows 
give on the water. There is a peculiar charm in 
watching the unpretentious, old-fashioned waterway 
slipping quaintly through the city of blood and 
iron, of science and hard thinking, of peremptory 
officialdom and rapid transit. While the buildings 
and streets of Berlin remind one everywhere of the 
recent kings and emperors, the Spree still keeps a 
hint of the day of Irontooth, who refused the crown 
of Poland for the sake of old-fashioned righteous- 
ness; of Albrecht Achilles, who leaped alone over 
the walls of Grafenburg and kept five hundred 
armed men at bay until help came; of Joachim 
Nestor, the astrologer; and of the Great Elector, 
who, watchful above the river, still tries to guard 
the city's oldest part from a too ruthless modernity. 
And this is only fair, for he started the mighty move- 
ment which has made Old- World romance exotic in 
Berlin. 

Rude barges filled with timber or enameled bricks 

66 



BERLIN 

are poled laboriously up and down the shallows by 
patient men with low brows and dark skins, descend- 
ants, perhaps, of the original Wendish inhabitants 
of Brandenburg Mark, figures that sweep the imagi- 
nation back to the time when Henry the Fowler 
stormed the heathen fort of Brannibor, long before 
"Wehrlin," "the little rampart" in Bo-Russia, or 
"Near-Russia," began to show symptoms of grow- 
ing up into Berlin, the capital of Prussia and of the 
German Empire. 

Old Kolln, the island in the Spree containing the 
castle, the cathedral, and the principal museums, 
was first mentioned in 1237, seven years before its 
neighbor, Old Berlin, eastward across the river. 
The sister towns were of small importance, and there 
was not so much as a ripple on the surface of his- 
tory when, in 1411, they both came under the con- 
trol of Frederick Irontooth. Johann Cicero made 
Berlin the permanent Hohenzollern headquarters in 
1488, and two centuries later the Great Elector laid 
there the foundations of modern Prussia. 

The Fischer- Strasse, running southeastward from 
the Kolln Fish Market, contains some surprises for 
the adventurer, and the Nussbaum restaurant will 
give him a thrill, with its genuine tree, its sharp, 
picturesque gable, and the hint of Renaissance half- 
timber wall peeping forth behind it. 

4 67 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

But the part of Berlin that stands alone in its at- 
mosphere of romantic age is the Krogl. From the 
Fish Market you cross the city's most venerable 
bridge, pass the Milk Market, and turn down a nar- 
row alley between tall, old-fashioned houses, the 
plaster peeling from their poor fronts, but with 
flowers and vines in the windows — an alley with a 
charming roof -line, which bends gracefully down 
toward the river, where boatmen, their poles braced 
against a pile, walk their boats up-stream with a 
curious effect. It is good to find water-grasses act- 
ually growing at the foot of the Krogl, a strange 
sight within the limits of this stern city. On one 
worn wooden portal one notices a remnant of the 
beautiful iron tracery of the Renaissance. You 
pass through an arch by the waterside into a more 
picturesque alley. On one hand is a house the upper 
story of which projects as do those in the streets 
of Brunswick and Hildesheim, but its corbels must 
be in the real old style of vanished Berlin, for they 
are unique. And this house actually lurks in the 
heart of the German capital opposite a wall blessed 
with a blind colonnade and the rich patina of ages. 
Beneath another arch you pause to look through a 
doorway into a dusky hole where three Rembrandt- 
ish broom-makers are dipping yellow straws into a 
pot of pitch. The glare of charcoal is on their pale, 

68 







THE JANOWITZ BRIDGE OVER THE SPREE 



BERLIN 

worn faces and dark beards. Two doves coo on the 
perch just outside the tiny smoke-blackened win- 
dow. Hasten, traveler, oh, hasten, if you would 
enjoy the last of old Berlin! For the Krogl may 
soon be condemned by the same power that period- 
ically scours the statues in the Sieges- Allee. 

A sunset on the Spree, seen from one of the upper 
bridges, is well worth while. The traffic teeming 
on the glassy, rosy surface where it broadens into a 
wide basin, the bridge-lights stabbing the water be- 
tween boats, the irregular old facades of the right 
bank backed by the massive tower of the Bathaus 
and the twin spires of the Church of St. Nicholas; 
the bulk of the Provincial Museum, the domes of 
cathedral and castle, — all these compose in the half- 
light into a picture containing more of the elements 
of romance than one had dreamed that the city pos- 
sessed. 

Only three of the old churches, all begun in the 
thirteenth century, are noteworthy. The choir of 
the Cloister Church is Berlin's most interesting bit 
of medieval architecture. The Church of St. Nich- 
olas contains monuments of every period from late 
Gothic to the "Wig Time," as Germans love to call 
the weak classical reaction late in the eighteenth cen- 
tury; while St. Mary's is chiefly remarkable for a 
Gothic fresco, "The Dance of Death," and for the 

71 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

rude stone cross outside, erected in expiation of the 
lynching of Provost Nikolaus of Bernau in 1325. 

From these remnants of medieval Berlin, past the 
beauty and peace of rare canvases and marbles, the 
Spree flows direct to the turmoil and fierce energy 
which the Friedrich-Strasse pours over the Weiden- 
damm Bridge. This street is the main channel for 
Berlin's notorious night-life, which eddies about the 
Central Hotel and its vaudeville "Garden." The 
Cafe Monopol, near by, is a rendezvous for literary 
bohemia, and the Cafe Bauer, at the crossing of 
Unter den Linden, is the cosmopolitan resort par 
excellence. In Tauben-Strasse and the adjacent 
cross-streets lies the "Latin Quarter," full of 
Moulins Rouges and Bavarian hostelries, of ball- 
houses, variety-shows, and small, select cafes that 
open at two in the morning. A reckless spirit is the 
mode here, and one often sees this favorite quatrain 
on the beer mats : 

Das Leben froh geniessen 

1st der Vernunft Gebot. 
Man lebt doch nur so kurze Zeit 

Und ist so lange todt. 

(" Enjoy your life, my brother," 
Is gray old Reason's song. 
One has so little time to live 
And one is dead so long.) 

72 



BERLIN 

The Latin Quarter's frivolity is almost over- 
shadowed by the dignity of the Gendarmen Markt, 
the poor twin churches of which were capped by the 
architect of Frederick the Great with impressive 
cupolas, and now compose finely with the massive- 
ness of Schinkel's Royal Theater. These churches, 
the exterior and interior of which are out of all rela- 
tion to each other, are good types of the insincere 
Wig style. The market is particularly effective 
with the moon riding high between its cupolas and 
lighting Begas's marble monument to Schiller, a 
brilliant but heartless work. Two tablets announce 
that Heine and Hoffmann lived in this square. 

The Leipziger-Strasse, the southern boundary of 
Berlin's most interesting section, is the main busi- 
ness street. Its store-palaces remind one that Ber- 
lin is the leading commercial and railroad center of 
the Continent, and take the mind back along the line 
of shrewd, businesslike Hohenzollerns who have 
brought this about. It is no freak of chance that 
placed the stock exchange opposite the castle and 
cathedral, or that placed the Ministry of War and 
the Herrenhaus in the Leipziger-Strasse. For 
much of Prussia's political success is due to the fact 
that Berlin is the chief market for money, grain, 
spirits, and wool. Until recently the English have 
supposed that they had a monopoly of European 

73 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

business talent; but now Berlin's rapidly growing 
industries are making England and America look 
to their laurels in iron- founding, the manufacture 
of machines, railroad materials, wagons, weapons, 
electrical supplies, and in the chemical and textile 
industries. And the city knows how to harmonize 
the practical with the esthetic; Wertheim's beauti- 
ful department store was built by the royal architect 
of museums, Alfred Messel, while the architecture 
of the Rheingold, near by, compares favorably with 
that of any American restaurant. 

From this commercial street, Wilhelm-Strasse 
leads past the palaces and gardens of the Chancellor, 
the Foreign Office, the ministers, and the English 
Embassy to Unter den Linden. In the quality, 
though not in the quantity, of its activities, Wilhelm- 
Strasse is considered the diplomatic center of Eu- 
rope. It is a monument to the ruler who, in spite 
of his inherited instincts, has preserved the peace of 
the Continent for twenty years. 

The masses of marble in memory of Frederick 
III and the Empress Victoria, erected by William 
II outside the Brandenburg Gate, are regarded with 
dismay by artistic Berlin, as is the Column of Vic- 
tory in the Konigs-Platz, and to a less degree the 
Reichstag, whose gifted architect, Paul Wallot, was 
hampered by imperial collaboration. The exterior 

74 



BERLIN 

lacks unity, and the sculpture is monotonously mili- 
tant; but the interior is a masterpiece of arrange- 
ment. 

Hamburg's mighty monument to Bismarck 
dwarfs the Berlin bronze before the Reichstag both 
in bulk and in spirit ; but, on each side of it, the mer- 
men and the flsherfolk are delightfully un-Prussian 
interludes, while the hawthorns about the Column of 
Victory add, in June, a grateful glow of color to 
colorless Berlin. 

In the Sieges-Allee, William II hit upon a capital 
idea, which does credit to his love of education and 
to his pride in his forerunners. But here again it is 
recognized that the Emperor fell short, and his 
family feeling came out too aggressively, — worst 
of all, that he made the old mistake of fettering the 
individuality of his artists, so that there are few 
works of genius between the Column of Victory 
and the Roland Fountain, like Schott's "Albrecht 
the Bear," and Briitt's "Otto the Lazy." There is, 
by the way, a popular belief that the latter comes 
down from his pedestal at night and goes to sleep 
on the stone bench. And this is the pleasantest thing 
I have heard the Berliners say of the Sieges-Allee, 
which they have christened "The Avenue of Dolls." 
One schoolmaster, however, is said to have set his 
boys a theme on "The Leg-attitudes of the Hohen- 

77 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

zollerns." The thirty-two monuments are too close 
together. The formal recurrence of standing ruler, 
two Hermes of eminent men, and a semicircular 
bench grows monotonous; and it would have been 
more fitting to have put the warrior family into 
bronze instead of brittle white marble. Yet in view 
of the conditions under which the artists worked 
the average of individual plastic achievement is high. 

It is not generally known that the Tiergarten 
is the private property of the Emperor, and is a rem- 
nant of the ancient hunting forest of the Hohenzol- 
lerns, which once extended to the castle itself. It is 
so full of sculpture that the people jokingly call it 
the "Marmora See," and deny that there is any room 
for another piece of marble; yet some of the monu- 
ments, like those to Wagner and Queen Louise, are 
excellent. 

Although it is hard to find a spot in the Tier- 
garten free from the sound of cabs and trolleys, yet 
it is to me one of the most delightful of city parks. 
Its chief charm lies in the beauty of its venerable 
trees, in the many ponds and streams filled with 
water-fowl, in the flowers and shrubs, and the con- 
stantly changing delight of its vistas. On coming 
here from the tastelessness of the Sieges- Allee, one 
is impressed with quite another phase of the Hohen- 
zollern character— its genuine love of nature, merely 

78 



BERLIN 

hinted at in the Tiergarten, and which finds a fuller 
expression in Potsdam. 

There is another park which is quieter, simpler, 
more idyllic— the grounds of Charlottenburg Castle. 
You pass the Technical High School, a model of 
its kind, and, as you walk westward, the people seem 
to grow friendlier, the houses older, and you see an 
occasional alley or court that is almost picturesque. 
Color creeps imperceptibly into the architecture, and 
the castle, with its high, graceful dome, is in a warm 
orange tint that reminds you of Sans Souci. 

Back of it, in a lengthy line, stand busts of Roman 
emperors and their wives, with their usually official 
features relaxed, as is proper on a suburban jaunt. 
The grass grows long with a delicious informality 
in the half -neglected grounds, damp and delight- 
ful as though it knew nothing of officialdom. One 
feels that one may even venture to set foot on it 
without starting Prussian fulminations. And one 
likes to think of those royal dead lying in the lovely 
mausoleum amid this red-tapeless nature after their 
etiquette-trammeled lives. 

The Zoological Garden at the southwestern corner 
of the Tiergarten is one of the most complete and 
best organized collections of animals in the world. 
But the human animal, here as everywhere, is the 

79 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

most interesting exhibit. The "Zoo" seems always 
full of Berliners, and is an excellent place to study 
that remarkable species. 

When I speak of the Berliner, I do not mean the 
highest stratum of Berlin society; for the gentle- 
man and the gentlewoman are fairly constant types 
the world over, and, in judging the average quality 
of the people of any metropolis, one finds the cul- 
tured classes forming such a slight proportion of the 
whole as to be almost negligible. 

There are, of course, many citizens of Berlin who 
are represented in no detail of the following picture. 
It is a composite portrait of that well-known per- 
sonage whom the young clerk, fresh from the prov- 
inces, sets about imitating; the person whose origin 
is recognized the moment he enters any European 
cafe; the person with whom the stranger in Berlin 
has almost exclusive dealings. 

The studies for this portrait were gathered not 
alone from personal observation during repeated 
stays in Berlin, but also from a consensus of the 
opinions of many Berliners and other Germans and 
foreigners, and from the voluminous literature of the 
subject. 

The Berliner inclines to imperial standards in 
appearance and character, very much as his city 
does. A smooth, determined chin, a daunting 

80 



BERLIN 

glance, a right noble pose, a rapid stride, are all the 
mode. An upturned mustache has recently been 
de rigueur, and one notices with a smile that even the 
bronze mermen on the Heydt Bridge possess the 
imperial "string-beard." 

One of the Berliner's most trying characteristics 
is his superiority. He has known the latest joke 
at least ten years. Do not try to tell him anything 
or to strike from him the least spark of enthusiasm ; 
for news is no news to him : he was born blase. His 
eleventh commandment is, "Let not thyself be 
bluffed"; his life motto, "Nil admirari." In con- 
versation he instinctively interrupts each fresh sub- 
ject to deliver the last word upon it, and to argue 
with him is to insult him. Here it is easy to trace 
the didactic influence of the ruler who devotes much 
of his spare time to the instruction of genius. 

There is something cutting in the Berliner's 
speech. Perhaps Voltaire's influence on the great 
Frederick, the critic-king, started this dreadful 
habit, which seems to grow with indulgence. It is 
a curious coincidence that the first performance of 
Goethe's "Faust" should have been given in Schloss 
Monbijou, the home of the Hohenzollern Museum, 
for it would almost seem as though the Berliner s 
had modeled their daily speech after the caustic, 
sneering style of the engaging villain in that drama. 

83 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

They have little humor, but much wit of the barbed, 
barracks variety. And their target is the universe. 

Of a cross-eyed man they say: "He peeps with 
his right eye into his left waistcoat pocket"; of one 
with a large mouth: "He can whisper into his own 
ear"; of a pock-marked person: "He sat on a cane- 
bottomed chair with his face." 

Bismarck often showed this kind of wit, as, 
for instance, in the letter written in 1844 from 
Norderney: 

Opposite me at table sits the old Count B . . . , one of 
those shapes that appear to us in dreams if we are not feel- 
ing well, a fat frog without legs, which before each bite 
tears open its mouth like a sleeping-bag down to the shoul- 
ders, so that I hold on giddily to the edge of the table. 

This sort of thing is telling, but it hardly makes 
for brotherly love, and a little of it goes a great way. 
Humor implies sympathy; wit, the opposite; and 
this exclusive cultivation of wit is a product of the 
ancient reserve and Ungemiitlichkeit of the North. 

In the "Germania," Tacitus describes the North 
German's coldness and reserve, his love of solitude, 
his custom of settling far from high-road and neigh- 
bor. And he has changed little at heart since 
Tacitus. Many of the Hohenzollerns have pos- 
sessed this quality, but none more than Frederick 
the Great. "He had," wrote Carlyle, "the art of 

84 



BERLIN 

wearing among his fellow-creatures a polite cloak- 
of-darkness ... a man politely impregnable to 
the intrusion of human curiosity; able to look 
cheerily into the very eyes of men, and talk in a 
social way face to face, and yet continue intrin- 
sically invisible to them." 

The Berliner is unapproachable and outwardly 
cold. He is prudish about showing emotion, and 
considers the gemutlich Bavarian effeminate. True, 
allowance must be made for the disappearance of hu- 
man qualities among the people of a metropolis ; but 
Berliners are far less friendly than Parisians or Lon- 
doners. 

The most merciless critics of Berlin, however, 
are its own citizens. 

"We are become such dreary people," writes Nau- 
mann, "that we are almost dead of inner cold. We 
are rich in knowledge, and beggars in feeling. We 
are become too withered for boundless offering, for 
love unto death, for sacrifice and devotion, for 
prayer and eternal hope. We have been taught that 
we must be sapless, heartless half -men if we would 
stand on the summit of the times. Alas ! this barren, 
this parched, this pitiful civilization !" 

Aggressiveness has ever been a leading Prussian 
trait, and without it the history of Europe would 
have been quite different. But this quality has 

85 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

often shown to poor advantage, as when Frederick 
William caned the shrinking Potsdam Jew, ex- 
claiming, "I '11 teach you to love me!" 

The city is alive with uniforms. The citizen 
brings the manners of the camp into his daily life, 
and, in lieu of an epaulet, goes about with a chip 
on his shoulder. In the shops it is common for the 
clerk to inquire sneeringly, "Is that all you 're going 
to buy?" And presently those trite old phrases 
about "the world's broad field of battle" and "the 
bivouac of Life" begin to take on, for the stranger, 
a little more vital meaning. 

In the Museum of Arts and Crafts I had an ex- 
perience characteristic of the city. A pile of five- 
cent catalogues lay on a table in the main hall. I 
thought of investing, but my hand was still on the 
way when, from fifty feet behind, came the roar 
of a guard: "Don't touch! Those cost money." 
There is a favorite Berlin motto apropos of this 
quality : 

Bescheidenheit ist eine Zier, 

Doch kommt man weiter ohne ihr. 

(Humility has charm, no doubt, 
But one can get ahead without.) 

Though the Berliners are their own most extrava- 
gant critics, they will not tolerate disparagement 

86 




WERTHEIM'S STORE IN THE LEIPZIGER-STRASSE 




A GLIMPSE OF OLD BERLIN (AM KROGL) 



BERLIN 

from any one else. The other Germans call them 
"aufgeblasen," which is to be interpreted, "pneu- 
matic." A popular story is apropos: 

"Ah," cried the provincial, "behold the beautiful 
full moon!" 

"Pshaw!" sniffed the Berliner. "That 's nothing 
at all to- the full moon in Berlin." 

Their esthetic standards are reflected in the homes 
and the dress of the people, and not long ago Dio- 
tellevi, an Italian critic, maliciously wrote, "Their 
ideal in domestic architecture is that of the universal 
exposition." Over-ornamentation, and discords in 
colors, materials, and styles are the fashion. In 
this connection A. O. Weber, the most popular of 
recent German satirists, has written somewhat as 
follows : 

Berlin 's a place that makes me laugh — 
Marble and plaster, half and half; 
A city that reminds me ever 

Of some sublime, some howling swell 
Who wears a smart black frock-coat never 

Without high rubber boots as well. 

But the beautiful new statues of the princes of 
Orange show that the taste of official Berlin has 
improved of late. And that the taste of the Ber- 
liner has made a corresponding advance is evident in 
the charming new cement houses of Charlottenburg, 

89 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

in the great retail stores of the Leipziger-Strasse, 
and in the villas of Grunewald. 

Finally, before turning to the more agreeable side 
of the Berliners, it must be remarked that they are 
unconscionable martinets. A socialist once declared 
that it took half of all the Germans to control the 
other half. This is truer of Berlin than of any 
other place I know. There even the street-sweeper, 
highly conscious of his officialdom, wields his broom 
like a scepter. The sign Verboten! (Forbidden!) 
is more common than the posters of America's favor- 
ite articles of commerce in New York. The city is 
superbly governed, but with a nagging, tedious pa- 
ternalism that is at first amusing and then oppressive 
to one whose ancestors never formed the habit. There 
is a true story of a Berlin conductor and a lady 
who was standing with a lap-dog in her arms. 

"Sit down!" cried the conductor. 

"But I prefer to stand." 

"Sit down!" he shrieked, forcing her into a seat. 
"Lap-dogs must be carried in the lap." 

Because their unpleasant qualities are on the sur- 
face, and their admirable ones are below, the Ber- 
liners do a grave injustice to the rest of Germany. 
Many foreigners go first to the capital, are repelled 
by the people they first meet, and hasten on to 
France or Italy with the idea that all Germans 

90 



BERLIN 

have corrosive tongues and the manners of a drill- 
sergeant. Whereas there is no wider difference in 
temperament between the people of Naples and 
those of Warsaw than between the citizens of Munich 
and the citizens of Berlin. 

There is a story of a Thuringian woman who was 
asked if she had seen Berlin. "No," she replied; 
"I have never been abroad." 

In fact, their countrymen regard the Berliners 
with almost as little sympathy as though they were 
foreigners. In Leipsic the word "Prussian" means 
"angry"; in Thuringia, "exacting"; in Altenburg, 
"in strained relations"; in Erfurt, "obstinate"; and 
in South Germany, "raging." 

Yet when one comes to know the Berliners, it is 
not hard to discount these irritating, superficial traits 
and to love the people for the splendid, enduring 
qualities that lie so deep. What was said of Bis- 
marck might apply to the typical Berliner. He is 
like a flannel shirt that scratches at first, but in the 
mountains you can wear no other. The Hohen- 
zollerns have worn so well that they have, as a rule, 
been more beloved in old age than in youth. 

It takes years to make a friend of a Berliner, but 
then you have a friend indeed. His chief virtue is 
his uprightness, his sturdy sense of duty. When 
the Great Elector was urged in turbulent times to 

6 91 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

marry, he responded, "My dagger must be my bride 
until this task is done." Frederick the Great said: 
"It is not necessary that I live; but it is necessary 
that I do my duty." The first Emperor had "no 
time to be tired," and his noble Empress Augusta 
was fond of saying, "Empires pass; God alone 
remains." 

Principles like these are the foundation of the 
Berliner's character. No other city in the world 
has such an honest and efficient administration. Of 
an annual municipal report Professor Richard T. 
Ely writes, "One finds it difficult not to believe it 
a description of some city government in Utopia." 

Over forty-four thousand citizens take part with- 
out reward in the administration of affairs, and these 
include the foremost Berliners. There is no body 
of men more public-spirited, more really benevolent, 
more imbued with the idea of progress. And over 
2000 of the 2,000,000 inhabitants are members of 
local charity commissions which have discovered how 
to help the poor without imposing degrading 
conditions. 

In the gift for organization and in executive 
talent the Berliners rival their rulers. "No Euro- 
pean court," writes Bryce, "has been more consis- 
tently practical than that of Berlin. . . . Her rulers 
have eschewed sentimental considerations them- 

92 



BERLIN 

selves and have seldom tried to awaken them in the 
minds of the people. . . . Ever since the Reforma- 
tion the Hapsburg princes and their policy have been 
regarded with aversion by the more intelligent and 
progressive part of the nation; while Prussia, recog- 
nized from the days of the Great Elector as the lead- 
ing Protestant power, naturally became the reposi- 
tory of intelligence, liberty, and enlightenment." 
So it is not surprising that they should have borne a 
leading part in forming the Tariff Union of 1833, 
in making education compulsory, in agrarian re- 
form, in the conscription movement, and in the uni- 
fication of the German Empire. 

"Berlin is new, all new, too new," exclaimed 
Huard in his caricature, "Berlin comme je l'ai vu," 
— "newer than any American city, newer than Chi- 
cago, which is the only city comparable to it in the 
prodigious rapidity of its development." Indeed, 
in freshness, in youthful energy and initiative, the 
Hohenzollerns and the Berliners are more like 
Americans than like Germans. And in the matter 
of municipal comfort they have left every one else 
far behind. Public utilities are managed by the 
city, and are such models of efficiency, cheapness, 
and profitableness as to make an American sick with 
envy. Every street is thoroughly cleaned in the 
small hours of the night, and the humblest pave- 

93 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

ments are as immaculate as the asphalt of Unter 
den Linden. It is possible that such splendid re- 
sults might have been reached in a kindlier way; 
but after years in Berlin the advantages of the 
system neutralize one's irritation at being over- 
governed. 

The Berliners have inherited their masters' love 
of independence — a reason for the periodic friction 
between ruler and subject. This quality of the 
North Germans (whose ancient names were derived 
from words meaning "sword" and "warrior") made 
them the most obstinate opponents of the Roman 
rule, and led them to embrace Protestantism long 
before the rest of Germany. And in Berlin to-day 
the Protestants outnumber the Roman Catholics by 
nine to one. 

Like their Emperor, the people of Berlin have 
an earnest desire for culture, and, like him, are con- 
stantly trying to make encyclopedias of themselves. 
Though the city has produced few artists of the first 
rank, it has been more fortunate in begetting scholars 
and philosophers, and has always succeeded in in- 
ducing genius to come and work in its unfavorable 
atmosphere, although such men as Goethe and 
Mendelssohn have denounced the anticreative spirit 
of the place. 

Though the Berliners are such virulent self -critics, 

94 



BERLIN 

they are their own most devoted adorers. So it is 
not strange that they abuse in set terms the princes 
after whom they have patterned — and love them as 
their own souls. It is touching to see the devotion 
in the faces of the crowd as the Emperor every 
morning leaves the Chancellor's palace, or as he 
drives in Unter den Linden down an avenue of 
hatless subjects. I recollect a characteristic scene. 
The Emperor was taking the air on foot, followed 
by two adjutants, the Empress trotting to keep up 
with his vigorous pace. Lined along the curb ahead 
were forty droshkies, their rabid, anti-imperialistic, 
socialistic drivers drooping on their boxes or lolling 
inside. The first man to spy his Majesty gave a 
sharp hiss, and the whole line, with more alacrity than 
I had ever before noticed in them, leaped to the 
ground and devotedly swept off their shiny, water- 
proof hats, while the Emperor, greatly amused, 
strode along, saluting as regularly as though he were 
chopping a cord of wood. 

The damp, misty climate has undoubtedly had a 
disagreeable effect on the character of the people, 
for the city is in the latitude of Labrador and lies 
low, near that fog-breeder, the Baltic. 

But a mellow, perfect bit of autumn weather 
creates the illusion, by sheer force of contrast, that 
Berlin is one of the most ravishing places in the 

95 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

world. One can dream in the parks or wander along 
the streams, rilled with the dolce far niente of Fiesole 
or Sorrento. And the people, the harsh, corrosive 
Berliners, seem suddenly to secrete a little of the 
milk of human kindness. On such a day I have 
seen a group of wry-faced Prussians run into the 
street and help a weak horse to get his load over the 
ridge of the Frederick Bridge. Such moments are 
wonderfully effective against their somber back- 
ground, and the most engaging sight I have ever 
seen in the city was that of a little green bell-boy in 
his brand-new uniform, being kissed on the sly by 
his dear mama behind the Palace Hotel. 

After a day of Berlin's best weather, the sunset 
along the Landwehr Canal is beyond praise. From 
the confusion and din of the Potsdamer-Strasse I 
came out upon a scene at the bridge as unreal as a 
vision— a suddenly flashed symbol of the good, true 
heart of Berlin. 

I shall never again look with a careless eye upon 
the Potsdam Bridge after having seen that sky flam- 
ing behind it a deepening crimson. And when I 
stood on the Cornelius Bridge, watching in the un- 
rippled surface the inverted pyramids of rosy and 
pale-blue sky framed by the dusky softness of the 
leaves; when I saw a curl of pale-blue smoke rising 
from an apex broken by a single magnificent tree, 

96 




THE LANDWEHR CANAL WITH THE POTSDAM BRIDGE. AS SEEN FROM 
THE KONIGIN-AUGUSTA-STRASSE 



BERLIN 

as though the sun itself were smoldering away, and, 
in the watery foliage, two high lights, picked out by 
the arcs on the bank, I praised God for letting His 
great out-of-door loveliness into the heart of that 
self-contained, repellent city. 

Framed by the trees the cold, Romanesque, 
Berlin-like spires of the Memorial Church took on 
a more than earthly glamour. I walked down- 
stream to watch the moored boats, never so pic- 
turesque as then; to contrast the Zoo's broad blare 
of yellow light with the radiance dying in ever 
fainter bars of azure, rose, and robin's-egg blue 
above the luscious curve of the bank; to enjoy the 
pronounced splashes of liquid light reflected from 
the bridge behind. 

A launch puffed into the sunset with a jet of 
creamy smoke, sending the brazen ripples vibrating 
to the rhythm of the sensitive, beauty-loving human 
hearts for whom the scene was made. 



99 




Ill 



POTSDAM- THE PLAYGROUND OF 
THE HOHENZOLLERNS 

,T would be as unjust to form an estimate 
r of the Hohenzollerns or of their capital 
without visiting Potsdam as to form an 
estimate of Germany without visiting Ba- 
varia. For Potsdam is more than "the 
Prussian Versailles." It represents the comple- 
ment of those sterner Hohenzollern qualities which 
are embodied in the city of blood and iron. 

Cold, colorless Berlin may well be seen on the 
gray days of standard Prussian weather. Sunlight 
seems exotic there. But the characteristic charm of 
Potsdam is revealed only when skies are bright and 
flowers are in bloom. 

One should prepare himself for the visit by spend- 
ing a while with the "History of Frederick the 
Great," and by studying, in the National Gallery, 
the pictures of Menzel, who created for our eyes 
the great character whom Carlyle created for our 
imaginations. 

100 



POTSDAM 

On the morning when the traveler awakes with 
the prospect of a sunny day in Sans Souci, he should 
chasten himself, leaving his Berlin-irritated critical 
faculty to seek what it may devour in the city, and 
with a free heart come away for a day of pure plea- 
sure in the playground of the Hohenzollerns. 

It is customary to visit Potsdam by rail and 
plunge at once into the rococo interior of the castle. 
But it is far better to rise early and alight at Wann- 
see; for a better approach is by boat, or, better 
still, on foot through the pines and beside the quiet 
waters of that string of lakes called the River Havel. 

One passes the Peacock Island, the home of the 
Great Elector's alchemist, where Frederick Wil- 
liam III planted his famous garden of roses. It is 
a memorable experience to emerge from the per- 
fume, the color, the breathless peace of wood and 
water, upon the magnificent sweep of road that 
skirts the Jungfern-See and to catch the first faint 
glimpse of the spires and domes of Potsdam. 

Near the bridge of Glienicke flashes out a glint 
of "the glory that was Greece,"— a copy of the 
choragic monument of Lysicrates,— to remind the 
wayfarer of Voltaire's exclamation: "Potsdam is 
Sparta and Athens in one." 

Prince Leopold, who lives here in the lovely park 
of Glienicke, is no lover of art, and has made him- 

101 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

self unpopular by refusing admittance to the castle 
and the hunting-lodge which the Great Elector 
built for himself in the days of elk and wildcat; but 
a Berlin painter who once made his way inside by 
impersonating an official has told me of the neglected 
ancient marbles and the wonderful Venetian cloister 
he saw there. 

Beyond the southern waters the Tudor Gothic 
of Babelsberg Castle shows through the trees, a style 
rare in these Northern lands and harmonizing with 
the Flatow-Turm, which was copied from Frank- 
fort's finest gate-tower. The first German emperor 
spent his last days at Babelsberg, and nowhere else 
may you have so vivid an impression of the character 
of that plain, kindly, ascetic old soldier. 

Across the bridge and beyond the "Berlin Sub- 
urb," the Marble Palace rises from among the trees 
beside the Holy Lake, the birthplace and home of 
the present crown prince. Seen from the opposite 
shore, the building has a really monumental effect, 
and the classical forms are handled with unusual 
elegance. Gontard, the architect of the twin towers 
in Berlin's Gendarmen-Markt, created in this palace 
the sincerest example of the "Wig style." 

Through these grounds, along the shore of the 
Jungfern-See, a charming path leads to the Pfingst- 

102 




THE MARBLE PALACE ON THE HOLY LAKE 





^ X - " 






BABELSBERG 



H-H< 



POTSDAM 

berg, with its huge, unfinished belvedere in the style 
of the Florentine Renaissance. 

It is difficult not to spend days among these out- 
posts of Potsdam. Indeed, it is an achievement to 
gain a clear idea of the town, so numerous are its 
interesting points and so widely dispersed. 

The way to the oldest part leads through the 
drowsy Dutch quarter, the austere red-brick houses 
of which, with their unfamiliar gables, were built 
by Frederick William I in a curious fit of enthusiasm 
for the architecture of Holland. Through a courtly 
old street flows a canal — a dozing canal — the func- 
tion of which is to float its groups of stately swans 
and to convince the traveler that he is in some quiet 
corner of Amsterdam. 

Beside the Church of the Holy Ghost, in the 
shadow of Potsdam's finest steeple, one may linger, 
watching the informal river life and enjoying the 
quaint houses that huddle on the banks. This is 
the site of Potsdam's earliest civilization. Here in 
the swamp lived the ancient Semnones until, in the 
fourth century, they were driven away by the 
Wends, who called the place "Potzdupimi," "Under 
the Oaks." These people gave their Slavic names 
to all the places of the neighborhood. It is interest- 
ing to know that, although most of these names have 
lived, the remnants of the elder Teutonic population 

105 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

managed to preserve traces of their ancient religion; 
for the legend of "The Wild Hunt" is a chapter 
from the life of Odin; and even the modern belief 
in the nightly apparition of a white horse near the 
Long Bridge may be traceable to Odin's horse 
Sleipnir. 

Late in the thirteenth century Potsdam was men- 
tioned in a mortgage as a Stedeken, or little city, 
and obliged to send as its military contingent to the 
league of cities "enen Wegener und enen Schiitt" — 
one mailed halberdier and one crossbowman. 

The Hohenzollerns came to the Mark of Brand- 
enburg in 1416. But they were a busy race and 
paid small attention to Potsdam, which they mort- 
gaged over and over again to princes, abbots, 
knights, and other financiers of those days. 

From these early rulers and the Thirty Years' 
War Potsdam suffered many things, and gained 
importance only with the rise of its mighty neighbor 
Berlin. Then it became the royal playground. 

The Town Castle was begun by the Great Elector, 
and finished by Frederick the Great, in a pleasant 
classical style in the midst of a wicked and perverse 
generation of architecture. Its noble colonnade is 
the first thing to greet the traveler coming from the 
station, and the mellow orange tint of its walls is 
grateful after the colorless facades of Berlin. In- 

106 



POTSDAM 

deed, this color contrast between the cities is sym- 
bolic; for one is the office of the Hohenzollerns, the 
other their garden. 

The castle stands for the two men who have done 
most for Potsdam: Frederick William I, who cared 
for its utility, and his great son, who developed its 
beauty. The rooms of the Spartan king have been 
left as bare and forbidding as even his taste could 
have desired. Above his death-bed are two atro- 
cious pictures painted by him while he had the gout 
{In tor mentis pinccit F. W.), one of which por- 
trays a nude female with two left feet. And here 
are a chair and a clock which he constructed under 
the same grim conditions of "torment." Memories 
of the notorious Tobacco Parliament still hang about 
the castle. This function was at once an informal 
council of state and a royal "rough-house." It is 
not definitely known in which room it was held, for 
Frederick the Great loathed smoke and obliterated 
all traces of the odious custom; but one cannot 
wander through the west wing without imagining 
the fat king and his courtiers seated about a table 
with pipes, beer, and pans of glowing peat, having 
their Brobdingnagian fun with poor Dr. Gundling, 
author, President of the Academy of Sciences, and 
court fool. Carlyle declared that the art of writ- 
ing was to Frederick William I "little better than 

109 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

that of vomiting long coils of wonderful ribbon for 
the idlers of the market-place." And so the court, 
in need of diversion, put the drunken Gundling to 
bed with young bears. When he refused to attend 
"Parliament" they broke down his door and forced 
him out with fireworks. Between the doctor and 
the minor court fool they arranged a duel first of 
burning peat-pans, then of blank cartridges in which 
the sublime goat's-hair wig of Gundling was mor- 
tally burned. And, to crown all, the king presented 
him with a coffin shaped like a wine-cask, in which 
he was actually buried, to the horror of the clergy. 
His grave with its pitiful mock epitaph may still 
be seen in the church at Bornstadt. 

Frederick the Great ushered in a more humane 
period, and it is a relief to pass on to his rooms, 
which have been preserved as religiously as the study 
of Goethe at Frankfort. There is the confidential 
dining-room, the trap-door table of which communi- 
cated with the kitchen, an invention of Frederick's 
to foil long-eared servants. 

The library consists of the works of Voltaire, 
some of the king's own writings unbound, and 
French translations of the classics. For French was 
his language; he read little German, and never 
learned to speak or write it correctly. Before Napo- 
leon's invasion, the silver furniture was painted 

110 



POTSDAM 

black, a needless precaution; for the conqueror al- 
lowed nothing but the paintings to be disturbed, and 
merely cut a strip of silk as a souvenir from Fred- 
erick's desk in the writing-room. Here the uphol- 
stery is much torn by the claws of the king's favorite 
dog, and his pet brass gargoyle still disgorges warm 
air from a corner. Outside the window is the "Peti- 
tion Linden," where any subject with a grievance 
used to wait for the kindly Frederick, who believed 
in the "square deal." In case they had to wait too 
long, they would climb the tree and flutter their 
petitions from its branches. Then Frederick would 
see the reflection in the mirror by his desk, and come 
to the window. 

His answer to one of these petitions in the second 
month of his reign brought him world-wide renown. 
The Fiscal-General sent in a complaint that the 
Roman Catholics were proselytizing. On the mar- 
gin Frederick, in his wretched German, annotated 
this sentence: 

"Die Religionen Miisen alle Tollerirt werden, und 
Mus der Fiscal nuhr das Auge darauf haben, das 
keine der andern abrug Tuhe, den hier mus ein jeder 
nach seiner Fasson Selich werden." ("All religions 
must be tolerated, and the Fiscal must have an eye that 
none encroach unjustly on the other; for in this coun- 
try every one must get to heaven in his own way.") 

113 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

The Town Castle possesses one of the most 
friendly of palace interiors. There the brilliant ro- 
coco decorations of Knobelsdorff ramble about, 
naively unconcerned with the structural and the 
official. And — blessed change from Berlin usage — 
the guides are men, not weapons of offense. 

Both Frederick and his father made a point of 
reviewing the daily drill on the parade-ground south 
of the castle, and to this day the spring parade at 
Potsdam is the most brilliant event of its kind. I 
remember attending one of these pageants at the 
invitation of the Foreign Office. Even the card of 
admission was strictly military, prescribing where 
to stand, what to wear, and exactly when to vacate 
the rampart in favor of the "allerhochsten Herr- 
schaften." After Berlin, the brilliant uniforms 
were almost blinding. The Lustgarten was a rain- 
bow, and though too small for a parade-ground, it 
was pleasant to have the trees so near. It lent an 
added charm of mystery and surprise to have a com- 
pany suddenly charge out of the wood, leaving be- 
tween the trunks only the sunlight mirrored from 
the steel-like surface of the Havel. 

Such a scene is characteristic of Potsdam's military 
life. In no other German city is it so picturesque, and 
it has had this quality ever since the days of Fred- 
erick William I and his mania for tall grenadiers. 

114 



POTSDAM 

Even the uniforms are more attractive than others, 
and I shall long remember the picture of a military- 
harvest here, the soldiers in scarlet, gold-barred 
jackets riding as postilions before wagons piled with 
golden grain. It seems as though troops were for- 
ever marching past the obelisk in the Old Market, 
between the noble portal of the castle and the nobler 
dome of Schinkel's Church of St. Nicholas. And 
they step out as though aware of being important 
and harmonious elements of the composition. 

In the Garrison Church, near the barracks which 
adjoin the Lustgarten, is the tomb of Frederick the 
Great. His will left directions that he be buried 
with his favorite dog on the terrace before Sans 
Souci; but his successor cruelly buried him in church 
beside his cruel father. When Napoleon visited the 
place, he bowed the knee and exclaimed, "If this one 
were alive, I should not now be here." Then he 
stole the conqueror's sword, which hung above the 
grave. The German people have never forgiven 
this outrage, and, by way of reparation, have hung 
the church with mellow old standards captured from 
French armies. When the first emperor placed his 
trophies there he exclaimed : "God was with us. His 
alone is the glory." In the royal vault one evening 
in 1805, Frederick William III and Alexander I of 

6 115 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

Russia sealed their friendship and laid the founda- 
tions of the Russo-German Alliance. 

On its way to Sans Souci, the tram passes the 
Wilhelms-Platz, an eloquent testimony to the prac- 
tical nature of old Frederick William I. This was 
the site of the Lazy Lake, and the picturesque canal 
was dug to drain it; but the lake was too lazy even 
for canal adventures, and had to be filled in, a labor 
of years. For the greater part of his reign Fred- 
erick William I struggled obstinately with this prob- 
lem, but the site of the Lazy Lake could not be 
called terra firma until his son brought more modern 
methods to bear on it. 

The domestic architecture of Potsdam may best 
be studied in the Nauener, Charlotten, and Hoditz 
Strassen. Under the two soldier-kings, even the 
houses were forced into uniform, and one may see 
whole streets of quaint, two-storied facades, with 
baldachined windows and tall classical columns 
topped by putti and plump urns of plenty, a dig- 
nified style, staid and self-important perhaps, yet 
gracious and in perfect harmony with its setting. 

As one goes westward, farther and farther from 
the asperities of Berlin, the atmosphere grows 
friendlier, and, as it seems, less Prussian, until — 
wonder of wonders!— there appears a real Italian 
campanile. 

116 




THE OLD MARKET 



POTSDAM 

That lover of Italy, Frederick William IV, 
modeled the Church of Peace after the Roman San 
Clemente, with a bell-tower copied after Santa 
Maria in Cosmedin. The corner-stone was laid on 
the centenary of Sans Souci, and the king wrote to 
Bishop Eylert: 

After much thought, I will name the new suburban 
church "Christ Church" or "Church of Peace." A church 
belonging to the grounds of a palace that bears the name 
"Sans Souci," "Care-free," strikes me as suitable to dedicate 
to the eternal Prince of Peace; and so to confront — or, bet- 
ter still, to contrast — the worldly negative "Care-free" with 
the spiritually positive "Peace." 

Here in the mausoleum the Emperor Freder- 
ick III (father of the present Emperor) lies in a 
sarcophagus of Greek marble under a dome of Vene- 
tian mosaic. But the cloisters are best of all. To 
come suddenly upon such cloisters in Prussia is as 
though an arctic explorer should stumble upon "a 
beaker full of the warm south." 

Near the mausoleum entrance are Rauch's 
"Moses" and Thorwaldsen's "Christ," the latter a 
replica of the dominant figure in the Frue Kirke 
in Copenhagen. 

But one forgets them in looking out between the 
columns of the ivied cloisters to the pools, the gay, 
shadow-flecked turf, and the May foliage of Sans 

119 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

Souci. I shall never forget the morning I first en- 
tered those gardens. Rhododendrons were every- 
where in royal purple, lavender, old rose, and white. 
There were fuchsias and honeysuckles among cop- 
per-beeches that grew like single, huge, austere 
flowers. There were effective arrangements of haw- 
thorn, and the lindens were in full flower. Little 
daisies made specks of brightness on the springy, 
swarded banks of a lazy brook, where willows 
drooped over drowsing lily-pads. There were rose- 
bushes as tall as Frederick William's grenadiers, 
who used to grow vegetables on the very spot where 
a goat-footed marble Marsyas now capered gaily to 
save his skin, among clouds of lilac and great, bloom- 
ing fruit-trees. Delightfully un-Prussian gardeners 
snored under sacking in the shade, and their new- 
mown grass lay heaped informally by them on the 
walks. The branches were full of bird-song, and 
the thought came that the musical Frederick must 
have stocked his gardens with songsters as he stocked 
his palaces with philosophers and painters and mu- 
sicians. May the birds of Sans Souci prove as hardy 
a race as the Hohenzollerns themselves! 

The grounds were full of surprises. I came upon 
masses of fern backed by feathery spruces, dwarf 
cypresses, and curious, glistening trees that crawled 
on the ground, smothered in ivy. 

120 




ALLEY IN SANS Sol'CI PARK 



POTSDAM 

At three, the old gardeners whom I had left snor- 
ing at eleven were still making music in the shade, 
and I rejoiced to find that here the discipline of the 
land was suitably relaxed. 

Berlin is strictly business to the Hohenzollerns ; 
but they do not let that grim affair spoil the sweet- 
ness of Potsdam. The people seem human and 
sympathetic, the martial statuary gentle and ama- 
teurish after the ferocity of Berlin. Even the four 
Romans about one of the fountains who are hurry- 
ing away with the four Sabines are doing it like 
gentlemen, and the frowns of the ladies are palpably 
assumed. A lion and a tiger, both on the verge of 
purring, watch you as you climb toward an arch 
surmounted by the most genial eagle in the world. 
Beside the main fountain there is a statue of Mars 
shying a little javelin. His dog-like wolf is joy- 
ously on the bound to retrieve it, and you fancy that 
the man of might is about to wink at Mercury, who 
is placidly tying his winged shoes over beyond the 
goldfishes, and at Diana, who is taking a roguish 
ride on an inimitable dragon. 

The Germans are an out-of-door people, and this 
place is a continual rendezvous for picnics. From 
the splendid fountain little Noah's-ark evergreens 
run uphill to my favorite bit of rococo. With a 
childish gravity Sans Souci, in pale orange, sits up 

123 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

there above its enormous terraces, with its flat, 
water-green cupola and its dear, absurd statues, 
which one can take no more seriously- than an idyl 
of Lancret or a fete of Watteau. I shall always 
see it as in that first glimpse, with a foreground of 
happy goldfish and Germans, through a veil of 
iridescent spray, and flanked by masses of foliage. 
I particularly like Carlyle's account of the tiny 
palace : 

One of the most characteristic traits, extensively sym- 
bolical of Friedrich's intentions and outlooks at this Epoch, 
is his installing of himself in the little Dwelling-House, 
which has since become so celebrated under the name of 
Sans-Souci. The plan of Sans-Souci, — an elegant com- 
modious little "Country Box," quite of modest pretensions, 
one story high ; on the pleasant Hill-top near Potsdam, with 
other little green Hills, and pleasant views of land and 
water, all round, — had been sketched in part by Friedrich 
himself; and the diggings and terracings of the Hillside 
were just beginning, when he quitted for the Last War. 
(Second Silesian.) April 14, 1745. . . . the foundation- 
stone was laid (Knobelsdorff being architect,) . . . and the 
work, which had been steadily proceeding while the Master 
struggled in those dangerous battles and adventures far 
away from it, was in good forwardness at his return. An 
object of cheerful interest to him; prophetic of calmer years 
ahead. * 

It was not till May 1747, that the formal occupation took 
place. . . . For the next Forty Years, especially as years 
advanced, he spent the most of his days and nights in this 
little Mansion; which became more and more his favourite 

124 





THE GREAT FOUNTAIN IN SANS SOUCI PARK, WITH THE TERRACES AND 
PALACE IN THE BACKGROUND 



POTSDAM 

retreat, whenever the noises and scenic etiquettes were not 
inexorable. "Sans-Souci"; which we may translate "No- 
Bother." A busy place this too, but of the quiet kind; 
and more a home to him than any of the Three fine Palaces 
(ultimately Four), which lay always waiting for him in the 
neighborhood. . . . 

Certainly it is a significant feature of Friedrich ; and dis- 
closes the inborn proclivity he had to retirement, to study 
and reflection, as the chosen element of human life. Why 
he fell upon so ambitious a title for his Royal Cottage? 
"2Vo-Bother" was not practically a thing he, of all men, 
could consider possible in this world : at the utmost perhaps, 
by good care, "Z^ss-Bother !" The name, it appears, came 
by accident. He had prepared his Tomb, and various 
Tombs, in the skirts of this new Cottage: looking at these, 
as the building of them went on, he was heard to say, one 
day (Spring 1746), D'Argens strolling beside him: "Oui, 
alors je serai sans souci (Once there, one will be out of 
bother) !" A saying which was rumoured of, and repeated 
in society, being by such a man. Out of which rumour in 
society, and the evident aim of the Cottage Royal, there 
was gradually born, as Venus from the froth of the sea, 
this name, "Sans-Souci." 

The lines of orange-trees before the castle recall 
a celebrated flash of diplomacy. Frederick once 
complained to the French ambassador that his 
oranges did not thrive in such a cold climate. This 
was so painfully evident as to give the courtier a bad 
moment. Then he answered: "Your Majesty may 
at least console himself with the thought that how- 

127 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

ever it may be with your orange-trees, your laurels 
can never fade." 

The guide through this toy palace was unfor- 
tunately of the aggravated Berlin type. But even 
he could not entirely spoil one's pleasure in the 
mementos of this mighty age and in the pure French 
style of the decoration, one of the most brilliant ex- 
amples of rococo art in the land. I longed to shut 
the door upon the fellow and his guttural voice, and 
dream of the great little man who talked such bad 
German and of the Versailles of his ideals. 

Scattered through the rooms are many of the 
better paintings of the Watteau school, and the 
library is a veritable gem of pure Louis Quinze 
style, with French classics and a fine bust of Homer. 

Voltaire's apartment throws light on the relations 
between the king and the philosopher, for Freder- 
ick himself designed the decorations. There are 
birds of passage on the walls to symbolize Voltaire's 
love of travel, peacocks for his vanity, monkeys for 
his homeliness, squirrels for his love of dainties, and 
parrots for his curiosity. To crown all, scenes from 
the fables of La Fontaine are embroidered on the 
upholstery, to remind him of the author he most 
detested. This is a faint but significant echo of 
the heartless generation before, the days of Gund- 
ling's bear-baiting. 

128 



POTSDAM 

In the music-room are the king's spinet and music- 
stand, with an autograph flute sonata by his master 
Quantz, and the clock that is said to have stopped 
when Frederick's life ran down— at twenty minutes 
past two on the morning of August 17, 1786. 

In his last days old Fritz was fond of sitting on 
the terrace outside, looking upon the beauty he had 
created out of a barren hillside. And one after- 
noon, as he gazed into the sun, he was heard to mur- 
mur, "Perhaps I shall be nearer thee soon." In the 
chamber where he died stands Magnussen's marble 
of him in his last moments. He is sitting with his 
favorite dog, looking back with keen, weary eyes 
upon his life, as though not wholly dissatisfied, but 
content not to try it again. On his last midnight he 
noticed the dog shivering with cold. "Throw a quilt 
over it!" he commanded. His last utterance came 
after a severe fit of choking: "La montagne est pas- 
see; nous irons mieux." ("The mountain is passed; 
we shall go better now.") 

The picture-gallery, with a few good Dutch paint- 
ings, lies on one side of the castle, balanced on the 
other by the famous mill of Sans Souci. 

History— or more probably legend — relates that 
Frederick coveted the mill, and when the miller 
refused to sell, threatened angrily to bring suit. 
"Ah," retorted the miller, "but there are still judges 

129 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

in Berlin !" and he kept his mill. It remains one of 
the most delightful landmarks of Potsdam. In the 
Sicilian Garden below, in an open space surrounded 
by beechen arbors, stands a modern Apollo amid 
scarlet geraniums. I know not whether the humor 
was conscious or unconscious that placed there the 
god of war and music and poetry, bending his brazen 
bow toward the mill, symbolizing the attitude of 
his eighteenth-century successor and viewed from 
the terrace above by judicial white philosophers. 

Near the obelisk outside the main gate is a delight- 
ful wooded spot looking over a sheet of water to the 
Italian cloisters, a corner where nurses in Spreewald 
costume like to congregate. 

Taking a southern route through the outskirts of 
town to the New Palace, I came upon such homely 
scenes as are dear to the dweller in cities. An old 
man was making rope in a field where women were 
hoeing; barefoot peasant girls in bright rags were 
filling a flat-car with sand ; behind some crazy palings 
near a thread of brook I saw a little brother and 
sister holding a tow-headed baby above a fence to 
compete in a crowing contest with an appreciative 
and lusty rooster. 

Charlottenhof, an Italian villa built by Schinkel 
for Frederick William IV, lies in a wilder stretch 
of Sans Souci park, a charmingly effective bit of 

130 




Hans Herrmann 



ii. I "O .^ 



THE STATUE OE THE ARCHER AND THE OLD MILL 



POTSDAM 

architecture, with its loggia and formal garden. It 
is a cabinet of curiosities and of antiques, many of 
which the king excavated in Italy. Here Alexander 
von Humboldt wrote his "Cosmos." 

The New Palace was built by Frederick the Great 
after the Seven Years' War, in a spirit of bravado, 
to show the nations that fighting had not drained his 
purse. It is one of the most elaborate efforts of 
later baroque art. The creamy sandstone pilasters 
and statuary, the round, high windows with their 
putti, are most effective against the light brick of the 
facade. The effect is more enjoyable from among 
the distant orange-trees of the eastern garden, where 
the coarseness of the too abundant statues does not 
intrude. It is better simply to be aware of the viva- 
cious or sentimental poses outlined against the mel- 
lowing sky of late afternoon, and the pleasant har- 
mony of the whole, capped judiciously by the dusky, 
bronze dome. On the western side this dome has 
a lighter patina, which does not blend so well with 
the richer ornamentation of the winged f ac^de. But 
the outbuildings called Communs balance the palace 
picturesquely, with their ivied walls and the neg- 
lected pavements of the colonnades, between the 
mossy stones of which the rank, assertive green of 
earth presses upward. Here the statues, unlike 
their less fortunate brethren, look as though they 

133 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

had never seen soap, and friendly trees grow close 
about them. From here there are grandly sweeping 
vistas north and south, which give an idea of the im- 
mensity of the park. It is said that its maintenance 
costs the Emperor $150,000 a year. 

The New Palace has 200 rooms, the decoration of 
which rivals the exuberant fantasy of Sans Souci, 
but gives only faint echoes of its elegance. For the 
one is French through and through, the other only 
an excellent German imitation. But the New 
Palace contains the best canvas that I have ever seen 
in a Hohenzollern residence, an "Adoration of the 
Magi" in Rubens's least worldly style — a picture 
akin in spirit to the "Last Supper" in the Brera at 
Milan. 

The Orangery is a decorative building resembling 
the belvedere on the Pfingstberg, filled with unim- 
portant sculpture and copies of Raphael, and topped 
with towers that give an incomparable view of the 
gardens. On the terrace are the Chinese astro- 
nomical instruments which Germany appropriated 
during the Boxer uprising, remarkable examples of 
Eastern bronze-casting and of Western greed. 

I found the country north of Sans Souci delight- 
ful, and the message of the big forget-me-nots that 
studded the grass on the way to the Ruinenberg was 
quite redundant. As I sat in the woods thinking it 

134 




VIEW OP THE PALACE OF SANS SOUCI FROM THE RUINENBERG 




THE RU1NENBERG, THE RUINS BUILT BY FREDERICK 
THE GREAT NORTH OF SANS SOUCI 



POTSDAM 

all over, a wanderer went strolling by, actually draw- 
ing real music from that antimusical instrument, the 
harmonica. And the whole place was alive with the 
spirit of his art. 

Above, at the end of a meadow, loomed the arti- 
ficial ruins which Frederick had built. It struck me 
as pathetic that the man who had unwillingly made 
so many modern ruins should have felt a craving 
for ancient ones. There were three Roman col- 
umns, with a fragment of entablature from which 
young saplings sprouted; a dwarfed pyramid of 
Cestius, a little round temple, a tower, and a seg- 
ment of amphitheater about a basin of water which 
the king had intended as the scene of such naval 
battles as the Colosseum once staged. 

The bloom of a great tree lay like snow on the 
surface, like eider-down on the earth. Ever since 
coming upon that Roman campanile below, I had 
been breathing the atmosphere of Latin lands, and 
even the exotic Berlin lackey had not made me quite 
realize where I was. I had just walked in a 
meadow that might have been trod by the feet of the 
Gracchi and Brutus to a ruin that might have stood 
below the Palatine Hill. It remained for the height 
of the tower, with its broader outlook, to restore me 
gradually to the German atmosphere. 

Southeastward lay Potsdam, with its picturesque 

137 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

steeples and cupolas, and, across the sparkling rib- 
bon of river, the half-timbered walls of the military 
academy. Southward, beyond the campanile, spread 
the reaches of the Havel, flecked with the white 
wings of yachts. In the foreground stood the little 
house where Frederick had hoped to find peace, and 
his pathetic ruins, with their snowy sheet of water. 
In the southwest, over a green, billowy field of grain 
and an ocean of boughs, rose three towers and the 
dome of the New Palace. Northward, like a turgid 
lake, spread the wastes of the parade-ground. On 
the horizon were etched the spires of Spandau. 
While to the northeast, beyond the fair waters of 
three lakes and the long sweep of the Grunewald, 
I saw, or seemed to see, a huge, dark dome domi- 
nating a huge, dark Berlin, even as, viewed from 
Tivoli across the Campagna, St. Peter's dominates 
the Eternal City. 



138 




THK BROAD BRIDGE 




IV 



BRUNSWICK-THE TOWN OF TYLL 
EULENSPIEGEL 

N a tiny square called the Backerklint, 
* surrounded by glamourous, half-timbered 
houses as bright with color as they were 
in the Middle Ages, there plays a unique 
fountain. An apprentice youth sits above 
the bowl, balancing a slipper on his toes and smil- 
ing whimsically down at a semicircle of spouting 
monkeys and owls. To the observant stranger it 
seems a curious coincidence that the window of the 
crooked old bake-shop hard by should be occupied 
by gingerbread owls and monkeys with currant eyes. 
But presently he discovers the inscription on the 
back of the fountain : 

Dem lustigen Gesellen 

Till Eulenspiegel 
dort errichtet wo er die 
Eulen und Meerkatzen buk 
Erdacht und gemacht von 
Arnold Kramer 
aus Wolfenbiittel 
141 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

(To the jolly chap 

Tyll Eulen spiegel 

erected in the place where he 

baked the owls and the long-tailed monkeys 

Thought out and wrought out by 

Arnold Kramer 

of Wolfenbiittel) 



Americans know of this medieval hero chiefly 
through the great tone-poem by Richard Strauss, 
and by his lesser descendants, such as Max und 
Moritz, and Peck's Bad Boy. But his name is a 
mighty one in Germany, and may almost take rank 
with graver heroes such as Tannhauser and the Wan- 
dering Jew. For he was the first Teutonic humorist, 
a sort of Socrates turned practical joker, who always 
affected naivete and always turned the laugh upon 
the other fellow. "To few mortals," wrote Carlyle, 
"has it been granted to earn such a place in universal 
history." 

Tyll was born at the beginning of the fourteenth 
century in the province of Brunswick, and played 
many of his most famous pranks near the spot where 
he now sits, more brazen than ever, laughing at the 
droll little creatures he once baked, to the scandal of 
the good baker, his master, in the old shop close at 
hand. Those liveliest of German children, the 
young Brunswickers, are never tired of poking their 

142 



BRUNSWICK 

fingers into the monkeys' mouths and squirting the 
water at one another. Tyll is the last to say them 
nay, and always seems vengeful whenever the police- 
man comes to spoil sport. The monkeys are notice- 
ably more popular than the owls, and there is some- 
thing almost pathetic in their bright little skulls, 
from which the patina has already been rubbed by 
the caressing hands of countless children. 

Perhaps the chief reason why the B runs wickers are 
the only Germans who have thus honored Tyll is that 
they feel an affinity for him. At any rate, they im- 
pressed me as having a greater love of practical fun 
and a more genuine Low- Saxon humor than any 
other Germans of my acquaintance. Nowhere else 
have I been so often accosted on the streets, and by 
such a variety of people. They seem to be fairly 
bubbling with mischief. They have not the malicious, 
cutting satire of Berlin, nor the polished wit of Dres- 
den; not the uncouth pleasantry of Silesia, nor the 
effervescence of the Rhine, nor the mellow, hearty, 
kindly humor of Bavaria. Brunswick is like a mild 
but continuous hazing party. The people are amaz- 
ingly quick with their tongues. You turn a corner 
in a long mackintosh, and are instantly hailed by a 
group of burghers with, "Well, my Mantle- Mister!" 
You pass a group of middle-class girls on a bridge. 

"Too tall for me!" cries one. 

7 143 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

"Down at the heel, oh, shockingly!" remarks an- 
other. 

"Think he understands?" 

"Jawohl. See how fast he runs away!" 

In these free-and-easy manners it is not difficult 
to trace the Brunswicker's inherent democracy. 

His humor, like Tyll's, inclines toward terseness 
and point. He is fond of such epigrams as the 
following : 

"Every beginning is hard," said the young thief. Then 
he stole an anvil. 

"I punish my wife only with good words," said Lehmann. 
Then he threw the hymn-book at her head. 

They are fond of making so-called "neighbor- 
rhymes," in which the peculiarities of each house- 
holder in a given street are tersely hit off with a win- 
ning combination of sharpness and shrewd geniality 
which neatly characterizes the people of Brunswick. 

Naturally these affinities of the medieval Tyll are 
deeply romantic and superstitious folk. And they 
come honestly by the quality ; for the oldest Teutonic 
myths, like that of Walpurgis Night, had their 
origin in the region north of the Harz. And it is a 
welcome thought that our Anglo-Saxon appetite for 
the romantic and the picturesque may be due in part 
to inherited remnants of exactly such ancient beliefs 

144 



BRUNSWICK 

as are still alive in the province and the city of 
Brunswick. 

The people believe to-day in vampires. They 
shut the door after the outgoing coffin so that the 
dead may not return and work mischief. Still they 
place a coin in the dead hand to pay for the outward 
journey, — that coin of Charon which seems to run 
through all history,— and intone this formula: 

Ik gewe dik dat dinige, 
Blif mik von den minigen. 

(I give thee what is thine; 
Oh, spare thou what is mine.) 

There are countless tales current in Brunswick, of 
wailing women with eyes of fire, the harbingers of 
death; of the World Dog, who appears in clanking 
chains every seven years; of will-o'-the-wisps, who 
hover over burning gold. It is a matter of common 
knowledge that he who moves a boundary-stone must 
wander about headless after death. Was it not re- 
cently that a Brunswicker met his former pastor at 
midnight in a forest? The reverend gentleman car- 
ried his head under one arm, but with the other he 
gave his late parishioner such a box on the ear that 
he never ventured out again after dark. 

Until the middle of the nineteenth century there 
were "Fire-riders" in Brunswick, whose function it 

145 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

was to mount a horse at the outbreak of fire, and with 
a saucer of salt in hand gallop thrice around the 
flames, chanting this magic formula: 

Feuer, du heisse Flamm', 

Dir gebeut Jesus Christ, der wahre Mann, 

Das du sollst stille steh'n 

Und nicht weiter geh'n. 

Im Namen des Vaters, etc. 

(Fire, you fervid flame, 

Christ Jesus, that true Man, demands this same: 

That you stand still yonder 

And no further wander. 

In the Name of the Father, etc.) 

The folk believe that people whose eyebrows meet 
become Marten at night and oppress the breasts of 
sleepers. They believe in the Werwolf, in the Wild 
Hunter, in gnomes and giants; and in the witches 
who ride on pitchforks, broomsticks, goats, and swine 
to their unhallowed tryst on the Brocken every Wal- 
purgis Night. Just before her head was cut off a 
local witch once confessed that she had "shut up a 
thief in a gimlet-hole in the foul fiend's name, so that 
the fellow peeped like a swarm of mice"; and to this 
day the witches of Brunswick are keeping up their 
grand old traditions. 

The devil is a familiar character, and one often 
hears : 

146 



BRUNSWICK 

Wenn't rant und de sunne schint, dann hat de duwel 
hochtit. 

(When it rains and the sun shines, the devil is getting 
married. ) 

And there is a remarkably circumstantial legend of 
how the devil married his grandmother at midnight 
in a hall in Brunswick, leaving behind him a costly- 
carpet and a ring worth two thousand ducats. 
People believe that he flies away with atheists, and 
that on February 15, 1781, his victim was no less a 
person than the great Lessing. For they always 
thought of their local poet and philosopher as an 
atheist, harder than steel, who was condemned to 
glow in the eternal fires. Indeed, there is a rhyme 
about this painful episode, which the children sing 

at play: 

De duwel kam emal up eren 
Un wull he gern en blanksmit weren. 
Doch harr he weder tinn noch messing, 
Drum nam he den professor Lessing. 

The translation must be free : 

Once on a time the devil came 
And wished to try the blacksmith game. 
But lack of metal kept him guessing 
Until he took Professor Lessing. 

Finally, lest it should be imagined that such beliefs 
and customs are no longer representative of modern 

147 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

Brunswick, let us take an instance from the police 
records of 1897. At two o'clock on the morning of 
January 19, Gottlieb Kitzke, a servant, and Fritz 
Krodel, a coachman, were arrested in the Wolfen- 
biittler-Strasse because they answered the night- 
watch evasively. It came out in the examination 
that they had been trying to conjure up his satanic 
majesty. They had carried to a field outside the 
city a sack of firewood, a number of wax candles, a 
spirit-lamp, and a cornucopia of salt. They had 
lighted the fire, the candles and the lamp, had offered 
up the salt on the latter, and had prayed fervidly for 
an hour; but no devil! The wood burned up, the 
candles down; but still no devil. Loud recrimina- 
tions on the way home led to their arrest. In Krodel's 
pocket was found a "Book of Spirits." The title- 
page ran as follows : 

The Seven-sealed Book of the Greatest Secrets: 

Secret Art School of Magic Wonder-forces, 

Angel-help for Defense and Protection at Direst Need. 

The Book of Holy Salt, 

The True Fiery Dragon. 

There was a book-mark at the chapter on How to 
Conjure up Lucifer. 

There are still other points of resemblance be- 
tween the city and Tyll Eulenspiegel. Brunswick 
liked Tyll because he was no respecter of persons. 

148 




(-1 2 



BRUNSWICK 

Tyll liked Brunswick for the same reason. Indeed, 
it is not strange that the place should be so demo- 
cratic, for it lies in that cradle of the Anglo-Saxon 
race between the Harz Mountains, the Elbe, and the 
Rhine and has obstinately preserved the old breed 
and the old speech. It has always been plebeian in 
spirit, and was one of the first Northern communities 
to fight for democracy — a fight prolonged in vain for 
four centuries. Because it is such an excellent type 
of a Low- German city, it is a shame that the late 
invasion of the High-German tongue should have 
"restored" its mellow Saxon name of "Brunswyk" 
into "Braunschweig." 

But its medieval democratic spirit has never been 
"restored" away from those incomparable streets, 
and to this day fills many of the public buildings 
with its poetry. The Rathaus of the Old-Town was 
designed with a true feeling for municipal propor- 
tion so that it might not overpower its private neigh- 
bors; while the Gewandhaus was influenced even 
further by them, for it shows traces of the compact- 
ness and conservatism of timber construction. 

Each of these, is a type of the municipal archi- 
tecture of its period. The richness and interest of 
the Rathaus come wholly from a two-storied Gothic 
colonnade, filled with tracery and gargoyles and 
Saxon princes under delicate baldachins. It is a 

151 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

happy instance of that self-restraint, unusual in Ger- 
many, which has made poems of Brunswick's wind- 
ing streets. In these the builders would allow no 
one house to lord it over the others, and here in the 
Rathaus the entire effect comes from a tenfold repe- 
tition of one theme. 

The Gewandhaus, as it looks down the sweep of 
the Post-Strasse, seems to fuse in itself all the ele- 
ments of the German Renaissance — the Italian's 
fondness for a classical play of proportion, his con- 
servative adherence to certain medieval effects, and 
the reckless passion of the Low Countries for pic- 
turesque, unstructural ornament. But the building 
has a lightness and a hint of gaiety which remind one 
that Brunswick, lying just beyond the Westphalian 
border, is touched by the happy spirit of the Harz 
and of Thuringia. And one has the impulse to 
climb that lofty gable among the caryatids and alle- 
gorical statues, the volutes and obelisks and inscrip- 
tions, to search the horizon for the blunt profile of the 
Brocken. 

These two structures stand as monuments of the 
city's wealth in the flourishing Hanseatic days when 
she controlled the main highway to the ports of 
Bremen and Hamburg and Liibeck. They sym- 
bolize as well the democratic ideal that preferred 
poverty to oppression. In 1293 the people, led by 

152 



BRUNSWICK 



the gilds, began their fight against a tyrannous gov- 
ernment. In consequence they were declared "auf- 
ruhrerisch," or riotous, by the Hanseatic League, 
and were repeatedly placed under the commercial 
ban, which almost ruined the city's prosperity. But 
it took four centuries to break their spirit, and 
though the cause was finally lost, democracy is still 
plainly written upon many of their streets. 

It is true that the name of Brunswick is in evil 
odor in the pages of American history. But we 
should not harbor resentment against her because, 
in the darkest period of her history, after the power 
of the people was finally broken, the worst of her 
rulers sold a few thousands of her sons to England 
to fight against us in company with the Hessians. 
The Brunswickers could not help themselves. They 
were suffering reaction from their long struggle 
against the same evils that had roused America to 
arms. Who knows whether, if the people had won 
their fight, they might not have been our allies instead 
of our foes? 

Brunswick's most striking quality is the delight- 
fully homelike atmosphere that seems to pervade it. 
No doubt the conservatism of a folk as rich as they 
in superstition made for loyalty to the family and 
the ancestral dwelling, and likewise the democratic 
spirit led each citizen to make his house his palace. 

153 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

These humble builders stamped their work with their 
own personality as completely as though they were 
sculptors and each house a model in moist clay. And 
they are the personalities of family men. Several of 
the streets, like the Weber- Strasse, the Hagenbriicke, 
and Meinhardshof have stood virtually unchanged 
since the sixteenth century, and they seem fairly to 
exude domesticity. 

On coming out suddenly into one of the many 
squares, if you have already caught the spirit of the 
place, your eyes seek first, not the great church or 
public building, but the row of old dwellings oppo- 
site, glowing with color, redolent of romance. In 
that nucleus of Brunswick, the Burg-Platz, for ex- 
ample, one is aware of something more significant 
than the castle and the cathedral. For these sump- 
tuous chords are a little sharp to the city's real key- 
note, as one finds on catching a glimpse of the dwell- 
ings opposite and the crooked street into which they 
lead. This is the authentic key-note— a crooked 
street filled with half-timbered houses rich with carv- 
ings, their stories pushing out eagerly beyond one 
another as if anxious to mingle their gargoyles and 
saints above the happy life of the pavement; and, 
closing the enchanted vista, some noble building of 
the people, or some real native church, its traceried 
bell-house riding high between twin towers. 

154 



H 
M 



a 




BRUNSWICK 

A deal of Brunswick's charm is due to its street 
plan. Many of the old cities, founded by pure Teu- 
tonic stock, in the south and west of Germany devel- 
oped from a group of houses huddled together 
without rhyme or reason— an arrangement called 
"Haufendorf," or "Heap village." On the other 
hand, the Slavic cities of the east were laid out on a 
deadly rectilinear plan, as monotonous as Manhat- 
tan's sorry scheme of things. 

In Brunswick these two influences complemented 
each other and produced a plan both of irregular, 
curving streets and of far vistas — a plan that sur- 
passes the others as a design by Durer surpasses a 
design by a cliff-dweller or by Euclid. And Bruns- 
wick has known better than most cities how to keep 
her scheme pure of modern improvements. 

No other German city has preserved so many of its 
Gothic houses. The earlier ones often bear friezes 
in which a characteristic step-like design frames low 
reliefs. The later Gothic retaliates on the church 
bell-houses, which are, in a sense, only transfigured 
dwellings, by borrowing their ecclesiastical tracery. 
But the most fascinating friezes are the allegorical, 
religious, and grotesque reliefs supported by carven 
beam-ends and consoles that seem to run the gamut 
of piety and humor. A scene at Stecher-Strasse 10 
hastens naively from Isaac to the Resurrection with 

157 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

a smile and a touch of real religious feeling. But the 
Brunswicker seems most at home in carvings that ex- 
press his whimsical, mischief -loving nature, as in the 
frieze of Neue-Strasse 9, a melange of monkeys, 
clowns, storks, mermen, and aggressive dwarfs. 

Animal symbolism lies close to his heart and is 
often inimitable, as at Gordelinger-Strasse 38, where 
a fox is making away with a goose and an ass is per- 
forming solemnly on the bagpipes. There is a fa- 
vorite kind of grotesque called JLuderziehen, or 
"Bummers' Tug of War," depicting an old game in 
which two men wrestle back to back with a rope 
passed over their shoulders. As for the gargoyle 
who pulls wide the corners of his mouth like a bad 
boy, he is found everywhere, even interrupting the 
decent progression of a row of wooden saints. This 
is the sort of carven fun that is often seen on old 
town halls, but nowhere else is it found in such pro- 
fusion on German homes as here. 

In the transition style the old "step" ornament 
developed into the fan-shaped rosette, which often 
radiates from some grotesque head. 

"She has the form of the rising sun," exclaims a 
sentimental German writer. "She is the rising sun 
of the Renaissance !" 

This design evolved into the egg-like ornament 
called Ship's Keel, and at length, reluctantly, into 

158 



BRUNSWICK 

the Renaissance. But such is the conservatism of 
private timber architecture that the reawakening 
was delayed by half a century, and even then the 
good burghers held fast to many Gothic motifs. 

The Hofbrauhaus is a good type of this period. 
But it has few rivals, for Renaissance energy seems 
to have focused here largely on portals. Those at 
Reichen-Strasse 32 and Sudklint 15 are almost 
Italian in their severity and poise. The most pic- 
turesque of all is opposite the north transept of St. 
Martin's, with its human and leonine caryatids and 
its elaborately costumed halberdiers. Another fine 
portal surprises the prowler in a narrow lane back 
of the Briidern Kirche, and another leads from the 
Backerklint to the place where they still make one 
of the oldest beverages in German lands, the famous 
Mumme beer — a dusky syrup like the most infamous 
cough mixture /hat ever darkened my childish in- 
terior. 

Brunswick has little noteworthy private archi- 
tecture built later than the Renaissance except the 
amusingly exaggerated portal of Bank-Platz 1 and 
the consummate baroque portal and oriel at the head 
of that jewel among streets, the Reichen-Strasse. 

Many of the older dwellings have an architectural 
feature as unique as are Danzig's Beischldge,— one 
that adds its element of mystery and romance. The 

159 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

Kemnaten are stone rooms built massively into the 
center of the half-timbered houses. No one knows 
their function. Were they fireproof vaults in the 
inflammable times of thatched roofs? Or were they 
the private strongholds of the days when every man's 
hand was against his neighbor and his house was 
literally his castle? 

Among the chief fascinations of Brunswick are the 
old Hofe, or courts. They are not so narrow or so 
teeming with life as in Hamburg, nor so opulent in 
color and effects of vista as in Lubeck; but they are 
richer architecturally, and in their inimitable inscrip- 
tions that show at once the dry wit and the piety of 
the North German, as in the following: 

Allen die mich kennen 

den gebe Gott wass sie mir gonnen. 

(God make my friends all free 
Of what they wish for me.) 

Court-hunting offers all the excitement of search- 
ing for hidden treasure ; for the most medieval court 
may be masked by the most modern facade. The 
only way is to enter boldly at every open portal, and 
presently you find yourself plunging through a door 
of the twentieth century straight into the fifteenth. 

There the low-class artisan— the "Little Citizen" 
as he is called— sits before his house cobbling as in 

160 



BRUNSWICK 

the days of Hans Sachs, or blows at a quaint forge 
the flare of which picks out Rembrandtesque high 
lights amid the dusk of the overhanging stories— 
stories quite unrestored and full of dim carvings and 
inscriptions. It was a memorable surprise to stumble 
upon the court at Schiitzen-Strasse 34 and find this 
motto : 

Wer wil haben das im geling 

der sehe selbst wol zu seinem Ding, 

a sentiment that might be translated : 

Who loves Fortune and would woo her 
Let him tend in person to her. 

There was a long inscription running along an entire 
side of this court. So time-worn and cobwebby was 
it that I had to clamber upon a rickety wain to de- 
cipher it; and with the tail of my eye I could see a 
group of eager young B runs wickers trying to muster 
courage enough to upset me. At length I made it 

out: 

Dorch Gottes Segen 
und sine Macht 
Habe ich das Gebew 
Darhen gebracht. 

(Through God's own might 
And benison 
This building as 
You see I 've done.) 
161 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

The most elaborate of the courts is entered through 
an interesting portal in the Jacob- Strasse. The 
richly carved beam-ends are supported on columns 
with curious triple capitals and this "Low" variant 
of a common inscription : 

Wer Got vortruwet 
Der hat wol gebuwet, 

which might be Englished : 

The man whose thoughts in God repose 
Has builded better than he knows 

There is no discordant note in these Brunswick 
courts. Everything seems there by right divine. At 
number 2 in the Wenden-Strasse (the ancient Via 
Slavorum) a heap of poles leans by a fine, late- 
Gothic, church-like window as naturally as though 
it were a necessary buttress. The court of Reichen- 
Strasse 32 has even its dovecote embellished with 
Empire medallions. And in the long garden-court 
of number 21, where numerous "Little Citizens" are 
packed in together— not without friction— this 
motto is conspicuous : 

Wenn Hass und Neid brandte wie Feuer 
So were das Holtz lange nicht so teuer, 

freely rendered: 

162 



BRUNSWICK 

If hate and envy burned like fuel 
The cost of wood would be less cruel. 

Some of the squares are hardly less perfect in their 
way than the best of the courts. The little Platz, 
"Am Nickelnkulk," for instance, where one of 
Brunswick's numerous iron serpents pokes his head 
out of the under-world and looks about in surprise 
at the picturesque cottages by the tiny stream. This 
is the home of legend. For "Nickelnkulk" is cor- 
rupted from "Nickerkulk," meaning a water-hole in- 
habited by a divinity called "Nicker," a sort of nix 
or water-sprite. This personage lived for centuries 
in his hole by the stream, and fifty years ago was still 
celebrated in a children's game. One child lurked 
in a ditch and tried to catch the others, who jumped 
over it singing, in the lowest of German: 

Nickelkerl keitschenbom, 
Ik sitt in dinen locke: 
Fange mik doch. 

(Nix of the elder-bush, 
I squat in your den: 
Catch me, then.) 

It has the genuine smack of the soil, this Low-Ger- 
man language, so much older and so much more akin 
to the English than the High German. A Platt- 
8 163 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

deutsch poet has written some sonorous lines in its 

honor : 

Uns' Sprak is as uns' Heiden, 
urspriingelk noch an free. 
Uns' Sprak is deep un machtig 
un prachtig as de See. 

Anything so near our language almost translates 

itself: 

Our speech is like our heath-land, 

Primordial and free. 
Our speech is deep and mighty 

And splendid as the sea. 

In Brunswick the lower classes speak "Piatt" almost 
exclusively, and, in picking it up, English is almost 
as potent a help as German. 

There is the little Ruhfautchen-Platz in the heart 
of town, dreaming over its water-filled fragment of 
the old castle-moat; the Kohl Markt, with its fine 
fountain, its view of the Gewandhaus, and its three 
Renaissance houses, Sun, Moon, and Star. (Al- 
though "Star" recently suffered total eclipse, its 
memory still twinkles on.) 

Then there is the Altstadt Markt, especially 
"when a great illumination surprises a festal night," 
and the Gothic fountain, transformed into rainbow 
mist, sends a gentle glow playing over the old houses 
on the southern side, and the band makes soft music 

164 



BRUNSWICK 

behind the tongues of flame outlining the arches of 
the Rathaus colonnade. Then the square is filled 
with gaily dressed, fun-loving folk who seem held 
within bounds only by the austere spires of St. Mar- 
tin's above them. 

Because Brunswick has preserved inviolate so 
many of its intimate old streets and the old stock in 
them, and because the stranger feels at once that this 
is a city of families, it is peculiarly fitting that it 
should possess the one work of art that expresses 
most completely the poetry of family life. In re- 
visiting the picture-gallery it is natural for the lover 
of Brunswick to hasten past even the pure spiritual- 
ity and mysticism of Rembrandt's "Noli Me Tan- 
gere," the royal coloring of his armed warrior, and 
the shimmering Vermeer interior, until he comes 
to the hall which contains the goal of his pilgrimage. 
If he is wise, he will look first at the remarkable 
Lievensz and at Steen's uproarious wedding-scene, 
because everything else pales after one glance at the 
Rembrandt. 

To me it is one of the grandest of all exhibitions 
of sheer creative power. For there is nothing un- 
usual in the subject, no dramatic or pathetic situa- 
tion, no scene of inherent poetic inspiration, no 
religious afflatus. It is a mere family of every-day 
people, caught amid their prosaic surroundings, and 

165 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

irradiated, transfigured by the fire of the master's 
genius. I know of no one else who has ever made 
more of such unpromising material. The Germans 
call the picture a Farben-Rausch J and we can only 
call it an ecstasy in color. The figures, in a delicious 
trance, seem in possession of the ultimate secret, and 
the eldest child brings toward the mother a basket 
of flowers as though moving through some precious 
spiritual rite. One returns repeatedly to worship 
before this painting as before a shrine and to realize 
why its spell could not be as potent elsewhere as in 
this city of homes. 

Just as the Rathaus and the Gewandhaus are 
subsidiary to the dwellings of Brunswick, so are the 
other noteworthy buildings : all but two ; for the aris- 
tocratic castle and cathedral are exceptions. But 
it must be remembered that these are both memorials 
of the maker of Brunswick's fortunes and her great- 
est ruler, Henry the Lion, whose death ended the 
days when the Brunswickers were content to be gov- 
erned by any one man. 

In the ninth century, Burg Dankwarderode was 
built by the brother of that Bruno who founded 
Brunswick, calling it Brunonis Vicus. Three hun- 
dred years later it was sumptuously rebuilt by Henry 
the Lion; but during the centuries of democratic 
agitation that followed it was ruined, over-crusted, 

166 



BRUNSWICK 

and forgotten. Finally, in recent days, some of 
Henry's noble arches and capitals were discovered 
and made the basis of the present restoration, which 
is a masterpiece of its kind, a worthy mate of 
the Marienburg in East Prussia. Henry's famous 
bronze lion in the little Burg-Platz outside, which has 
guarded his name for the last seven hundred years, 
snarls ferociously at you when you dare to won- 
der why the cathedral exterior is so unassuming. 
Indeed, the great burgher churches were all built 
on this general scheme, with a plain, massive western 
front, a lofty bell-house riding high between two 
towers, and a long, low nave, like a giant dachshund 
at the heels of his master. 

On entering the cathedral you see that the magnifi- 
cence was all saved for the interior as a setting for 
Henry's famous Gothic tomb before the altar. The 
architecture runs a brilliant scale from early Roman- 
esque to the fantastic, spiral-ribbed piers of the late- 
English Gothic. 

The place is filled with treasures. On the walls 
is a fascinating cycle of Romanesque frescos, the 
principal works of their kind on the plain of North 
Germany. There is a trinity of sculptures, in the apse, 
worthy of the lion in the square outside: a twelfth- 
century altar of bronze and marble, an old brazen 
replica of the Seven Golden Candlesticks at Jeru- 

169 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

salem, and, above all, a wooden crucifix of the tenth 
century, to which one returns again and again with 
ever new joy and reverence. It is a light out of the 
grossly Dark Ages. The face, hands, and feet are 
long and slim, the body is robed, and the folds are 
channeled as formally as Assyrian hair. Yet the 
figure has about it something benignant and royal, at 
once fraternal and paternal. A German authority 
named Doring has made the curious suggestion that 
this is not a statue of Our Lord, but of St. Era, the 
patroness of the crypt, who, as a foil to unpleasant 
attentions, was given a beard in answer to prayer. 
But I prefer not to associate this Christian Ariadne 
with my favorite Brunswick statue. 

There is no such splendor inside the other churches. 
They breathe, on the contrary, the spirit of men 
whose tastes were, first of all, democratic and domes- 
tic. They are eloquent of the solidarity that should 
exist between the religious life and the secular. 

In this town the street is no mere frame, as in so 
many other picturesque German cities, for an impor- 
tant building at its end; it is the major part of the 
picture, with the great tower or chiseled f acade as a 
background. St. Catherine's and St. Andrew's are 
splendid foils for the ways that surround them. St. 
Martin's, indeed, is almost too subservient, for it faces 
directly down none of the fascinating streets of the 

170 




CHURCH OF ST. CATHERINE AND HENRY THE LIOX'S FOUNTAIN 
IN THE HAGEN MARKT 



BRUNSWICK 

quarter. The best it can do is to enliven the Altstadt 
Markt, with its chain of traceried gables and its rich 
choir, where a statue of Luther usurps the place of a 
Romish predecessor. 

The other churches, however, atone for St. Mar- 
tin's unfortunate position. It is a joy to prowl 
through the narrow Stecher-Strasse and come out 
suddenly on the broad expanse of the Hagen Markt, 
where, beyond the misty waters of Henry the Lion's 
fountain, rises the facade of St. Catherine's, tall and 
slim and queenly, like some fair daughter of the peo- 
ple. It expresses more nearly than any other local 
building the proud independence of the B runs wick- 
ers, their joy and pride in the beauty they were creat- 
ing, and their feeling for the composition of the city. 

St. Catherine's is a typical Brunswick church. 
You encircle it to enjoy the gable-fields and to see, 
from many angles, how gracefully the western front 
detaches itself from the nave. The best view comes 
last. Inevitably you retire to the Hagenbriicke, 
backing up the crowded little street. And the people 
courteously make way for any one who is appreciat- 
ing how the high, corbeled stories of their houses close 
in on each side of the distant facade, the opulent red 
of the gable-tiles gradually moving in to bring out 
the green patina of the lesser tower and the creamy 
delicacy of the window tracery. You zigzag from 

173 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

curb to curb, comparing the scores of rival effects, 
and the climax comes on the corner of the Reichen- 
Strasse. These Gothic houses, teeming with twenti- 
eth-century humanity, are brought out by that 
Gothic house of the God of all centuries, beyond. 
They seem enriched and spiritualized by its very 
presence, much as the ideal church enriches and 
spiritualizes the lives of its children. That the rela- 
tion of the infinite to the finite could be so embodied 
in a double row of worm-eaten houses leading crook- 
edly from a church, I had never realized until the 
hour when I first stood in the Hagenbriicke. 

St. Andrew's has less of the gracious sweetness of 
St. Catherine's and more of the monumentality of 
the cathedral. But it heightens the beauty and no- 
bility of the surrounding streets as potently as its 
sister church, if in a more virile way. And it has a 
wider range of effects. 

The view down the Weber- Strasse is a worthy 
companion to that down the Hagenbriicke, only the 
houses are plainer, and the church more obscured by 
them. But St. Andrew's has in its repertory other 
pieces almost as inspired as this. 

You give yourself up to the curvetings of the ca- 
pricious little Meinhardshof, where the overhanging 
facades, leaning on their saint and sinner corbels, let 
only a narrow ribbon of sunshine slip between them ; 

174 



BRUNSWICK 

where the tiles run up suddenly into incorrectly made 
dunce-caps or break out into dormers or little eye- 
like windows bulging with surprise— tiles that cast a 
ruddy reflection upon the grotesque carvings of the 
opposite house-front, from which the glow rebounds 
across the cobbles and plays about a portal of black- 
ness leading* into some, indescribable court full of the 
mysterious and the medieval. 

At length, if you can tear yourself away at all, 
you round another bend and see, beyond a Gothic 
house more crooked, if possible than the street itself, 
the southern tower of St. Andrew's, the tallest and 
most impressive of Brunswick's many, shooting up 
from the picturesque Alte Waage that nestles at its 
base, looking more like* a home than a public building. 

Amid such intimate enjoyment of the humbler 
houses of the people, to come suddenly upon this 
stately tower harmonizing so completely with them 
was to find a new point of view. Brunswick came to 
mean the city of homes above all, and this tower, seen 
from here or down the steps from the Promenade to 
the Woll-Markt, never failed to sound this charming 
note of domesticity. 

The gables of St. Andrew's are the most interest- 
ing in Brunswick, and its water-spouting gargoyles 
the most enthusiastic. Only too often I have seen 
them discharging their liquid task with the most 

175 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

fluent joy, a condition alone attainable by complete 
fitness for one's vocation. And there is one, a lovable 
fellow, a cousin, of those on the houses, pulling wide 
the corners of his mouth as though performing a 
duty. The huge Gothic groups on the southern 
gable-fields representing the "Flight into Egypt" 
and the "Slaughter of the Innocents" are so delicious 
in their naivete and yet so touching that one chuckles 
as one looks at them through moist eyes. One of the 
most affecting and amusing of the reliefs shows 
Christ sitting with a group of cripples; for the 
church is supposed to have been founded by a group 
of wealthy cripples who lived in the Kroppel-Strasse 
adjoining. The learned Doring, however, contends 
that this is Christ in the Temple disputing with the 
doctors, whose spiritual infirmities are physically 
portrayed.. 

The bell-house of St. Andrew's, though simpler 
than that of St. Catherine's or that of the cathedral, 
is almost as effective. There is a threefold beauty in 
the conception of these lofty gables of stone lace- 
work. Tenderly they sound the city's dominant do- 
mestic theme, and embody the thought that the Ger- 
man art of music should have a separate architectonic 
expression. For the burghers conceived that the 
music of their chimes should be no mere adjunct to 
the steeple, the function of which is not to contain 

176 




THE ALTE WAAGE, LOOKING TOWARD ST. ANDREWS 



BRUNSWICK 

bells, but to direct the eye of the soul toward heaven. 
They also sound a note distinctly human, for they 
break the too abrupt idealism of the tower's leap 
from cobbles to sky by interjecting, half-way up, 
something that means to the Teuton the most spirit- 
ual joy short of religious ecstasy, and yet a joy that 
he may feel as keenly in a seance with his violin, be- 
neath the homely red tiles yonder, as when the organ 
reverberates through the nave on Sunday morning. 

These medieval bell-houses were prophetic as well ; 
for Brunswick was to have a musical history pecu- 
liarly honorable, as is shown to-day by the monu- 
ments to its two citizens, Abt and Spohr. 

Sometimes it is pleasant to punctuate this Old- 
World romance with a walk around the charming 
promenades or among the new villas beyond, or to 
go farther, to the Park of Richmond, the estate of 
the Duke of Cumberland, rightful heir to the prov- 
ince. But one always returns with new zest to the 
narrow, winding streets, full of the color and spirit 
of the Middle Ages, where the houses lean together 
across the ways as if to embrace one another. 

Not long ago an enthusiast was asked which Ger- 
man city he loved best. It proved a difficult problem. 
None of the large ones, certainly. They were too 
huge and many-sided. It would be like adoring a 
score of wives at the same time. Besides, unlike 

179 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

wives, great cities are too impersonal. On the other 
hand, little Rothenburg was for him almost too full 
of the romantic elements to be real. The people 
seemed like actors on a stage. He found himself 
constantly watching for the spot-light, straining his 
ears for the prompter, and fearing lest the curtain be 
abruptly rung down. Nuremberg's alloy of modern 
buildings and the modern spirit put it out of the 
question. Neither were the dwellings of Danzig 
friendly enough, nor its half- Slavic atmosphere. 
Strassburg he cherished for its cathedral, but disliked 
for its people. In spite of all their romance and beauty, 
Regensburg and Bautzen were too somber, Augs- 
burg too formal. Cologne he would almost have 
chosen but for its discordant foreign note, its dirt, 
and its beggars. The houses of Lubeck were hardly 
beautiful enough; those of Hildesheim, on the other 
hand, were almost too self-conscious and brilliant and 
precious. One cannot hold a treasure-casket in 
warm, human affection. 

And so, although he prefers the gemiitlich southern 
temperament to the northern, yet, all in all, he felt 
he must choose Brunswick. For the town of Tyll 
Eulenspiegel is almost unspoiled by the modern 
note; its architecture is the spontaneous expression 
of natures uniting Thuringian gaiety, sweetness, and 
taste with Northern depth and sincerity. It is a 

180 




THE FRONT OF ST. ANDREWS, AS SEEN FROM THE WEBER-STRASSE 



BRUNSWICK 

hearty, wholesome, true kind of romance that 
Brunswick exhales. And perhaps the democracy of 
the people, perhaps their humor, is what tipped the 
beam, and made him love more than any other in 
Germany the town that is summed up by the view 
of St. Catherine's down the Hagenbriicke and by 
the little old Backerklint where sits Tyll Eulen- 
spiegel, his monkeys' heads rubbed bright by the 
loving hands of children. 



183 




GOSLAR IN THE HARZ 

PDULATION is as important an ele- 
ment of the art of traveling as it is of 
those cousin arts, painting and music. 

I have had occasion to speak of get- 
ting the soul down from the shrill modern 
key of Berlin to the deep, mellow tonality of old Dan- 
zig. But there is another sort of modulation, quite as 
important to the traveler and more difficult. It is a 
smooth transition from the simple, deliberate, care- 
less romanza of outdoor life to the exciting, exacting, 
exhausting scherzo movement of some rich historic 
city where attention, memory, and sympathy are 
every moment astrain. 

In recuperating from the exhausting demands of 
a tour among the Northern cities the lover of beauty 
is often tempted to lose all sense of the flow of time 
in wandering with Rucksack and staff among the 
evergreen forests of the Harz Mountains, following 
where the charming Oker's music leads; idling in 
the fabled region where sleeps Barbarossa, his red 

184 



GOSLAR IN THE HARZ 

» 

beard grown clean through the table ; or held fast in 
the "wild romantisch" gorge of the Bode Thai, where, 
from each wall of cliff, the Hexentanzplatz and the 
Rosstrappe look down on the river boiling far be- 
neath. 

Standing on that lofty crag whence the princess, 
pursued by the giant, made her mythical leap across 
the valley and left her horse's hoof -print in the rock, 
the traveler gazes over the sandy level that is North 
Germany and makes out on the horizon, far beyond 
the spires of Quedlinburg and of Halberstadt, the 
massive towers of Magdeburg cathedral. 

With a start he realizes that there are other won- 
ders in this region than mountains and rivers and 
their genii. The fever of civilization seizes him. 
Rashly importunate, he crashes down on the itiner- 
ant keyboard with both elbows and rushes headlong 
into such a bewildering treasure-house of the ages as 
Halberstadt or Hildesheim. 

The transition is too abrupt. He is no longer 
used to cathedrals and Rembrandts and streets of 
Gothic houses with overlapping stories. If his time 
in Germany is really inelastic it would be far wiser 
to lop a day or two from Berlin or Leipsic or Frank- 
fort, from Dresden or even from Munich, and so 
make his journey conform to the canons of the art 
of traveling. 

185 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

Suppose that our tourist should, for example, 
actually come to his senses at Thale. Let him not 
make a hysterical dash at Hildesheim, but rather 
stop over a train at little Wernigerode to marvel at 
the ancient Rathaus and empty a glass in its vaulted 
cellar; to enjoy a slight foretaste of what the half- 
timbered houses of the Harz country are like; and 
then move on for a day in the more impressive and 
interesting town of Goslar, with its august history 
and its curious legends. 

Your entry into town is reminiscent of Nurem- 
berg ; for you come at once upon a huge, round fort- 
ress tower guarding the approach. But instead of 
lingering here you hasten to the farther end of town 
to see the building that made Goslar famous — its 
very raison d'etre. 

Goslar came into the world because it lay on the 
fringe of the Harz forests and at the foot of the 
silver-yielding Rammelsberg, both of which were 
owned by the ninth-century emperors of the Holy 
Roman Empire. They put up there a succession of 
hunting-lodges and small palaces until Emperor 
Henry III built the Kaiserhaus, which is to-day the 
oldest secular building in Germany. Here Henry 
IV began his ill-starred life. His preference for liv- 
ing at Goslar and the number of castles he built in 
the neighborhood roused the fears of the Saxon 

186 



GOSLAR IN THE HARZ 

nobles, who tried to assassinate him one evening at 
the Kaiserhaus. And this was the opening scene of 
the drama that culminated at Canossa, when, bare- 
footed, the Emperor waited three days in the snow 
before Pope Gregory's portal. 

The last Holy Roman emperor in these spacious 
halls was Barbarossa. After him the noble building 
gradually fell into ruin until the coming of the new 
empire, when it was restored in a rather hard Prus- 
sian style, and received into its halls the second great 
German leader, William I. Now, in bronze, the 
pair sit their war-horses on either side of the main 
flight of steps — Barbarossa and Barbablanca, as the 
people call them. 

The main hall is decorated with frescos of the 
Sleeping Beauty and the Barbarossa legends, and 
scenes from local and imperial history. Its principal 
attraction is the old Kaiserstuhl, seat of a long line of 
emperors. 

In the chapel of St. Ulrich the heart of Henry III 
lies buried. It lay formerly in the famous cathedral 
which Henry built near his palace and which was 
torn down in 1819. This piece of vanished glory 
possessed an extraordinary collection of treasures 
and relics. It made nothing of the bones of such 
saints as Nicholas, Laurence, Cyril, and Dionysius; 
for it boasted important remains of the Apostles 

9 189 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

themselves. There was half of the Apostle Philip, 
an arm of Bartholomew and one of James, a hand, 
arm, and the head of Matthew, and a large part of 
the bodies of Peter and Paul. There were also, 
among other wonders, an original portrait of St. 
Matthew and part of a nail from the true cross. 

Many of these valuables were stolen in Goslar's 
sack by Gunzelin in 1206, and when the Swedes 
occupied the town four years during the Thirty 
Years' War. Others were sold to keep up the cathe- 
dral during the hard times brought on by the Ref- 
ormation. So that the only remnant of the build- 
ing and its treasures to-day is a part of one transept 
near the Kaiserhaus, with some interesting statues, 
some of the oldest stained glass in existence, and an 
early Romanesque reliquarium borne by still earlier 
brazen figures of the Four Rivers of Paradise, old 
as the city itself. From this one piteous fragment 
with its sculptured portal one can reconstruct the 
whole — ex pede Herculem — and realize the effect of 
a religious pageant on one of Goslar's chief holy 
days, such as the feast of St. Matthew, when the 
bells in the twin towers went mad, when Henry III 
in his imperial robes swept down the broad steps of 
the Kaiserhaus, heading a brilliant train of prelates, 
princes, knights, and many a band of pilgrims who 
had come from every part of the empire to bow at 

190 



GOSLAR IN THE HARZ 

this famous shrine. And after the last Amen had 
died away among the lofty vaulting of the cathedral, 
St. Matthew in his silver sarcophagus was carried 
with due rites about the city walls. 

These occasions, however, were not always peace- 
ful. For Widerad, Abbot of Fulda, once quarreled 
with Hezilo, Bishop of Hildesheim, over a matter of 
precedence. Both brought armed followers to the 
cathedral, and a bloody fight broke out in the choir, 
the bishop standing on the steps of the high altar 
and urging on his men with all his resources of dis- 
pensation and absolution. Legend has mingled with 
this story of the "Blood-bath" and relates that the 
encounter had been arranged by the Evil One him- 
self, who now rolled about behind the bishop and 
held his belly in convulsions of laughter (halte sich 
den Bauch vor Lachen). Finally he flew away 
through the roof, calling out, "I Ve made this day a 
bloody one!" and left a broad crack which could not 
be walled up until some one hit on the expedient of 
stuffing a Bible into the breach. 

These buildings, then, the Kaiserhaus and the 
Domkapelle, are the only local Sehenswilrdigkeiten 
ersten Ranges — the only "see-worthinesses of the 
first class." That is why Goslar makes such a smooth 
modulation to Hildesheim. Here you have a mere 
taste of the labor of conscientious sight-seeing; then 

191 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

for the balance of your stay you feel at liberty to 
send your conscience to the hotel, while you yourself 
drift about happy, careless, and Baedekerless, seek- 
ing what your eyes may devour. In other words, 
you put down the big history book for an hour's 
ramble through the illustrated magazine. 

Perhaps you come upon a mighty round tower 
embowered in trees beyond the waters of the Kahn- 
teich. It is the old Zwinger, largest of Goslar's 
original one hundred and eighty-two towers of de- 
fense, and .capable of holding a thousand armored 
warriors. Or you happen upon an anomalous build- 
ing, a cross between church and dwelling, with 
columned windows, a generous spread of roof filled 
with little dormers, and, above, a projection unde- 
cided whether to be a steeple or a chimney. You 
venture through the Gothic portal and see long 
sweeps of raftered ceiling, and gloomy wooden bal- 
conies, and no end of tiny rooms where old women 
sit about knitting humbly and making, with their 
surroundings, the most delightful Dutch genre pic- 
tures of the sixteeenth century. Then one of the old 
ladies comes out, accepts a copper with deprecation, 
and quavers out that this is, please, the almshouse of 
the Great Holy Cross. 

Or you meander along the diminutive Gose River, 
that gave the city its name (lar is old Franconian for 

192 







THE BRUSTTUCH 



GOSLAR IN THE HARZ 

"home"). You find a delightful mill, and fall to 
sketching— or wish that you could fall. And you 
break into the adjoining Glockengiesser-Strasse and 
think of the bell-caster of Goslar who cast the fa- 
mous cathedral bells there and the spooky fountain 
in the Markt, and whose ancestor perhaps did the 
Four Rivers of Paradise in the Domkapelle. 

You appreciate the half-timbered dwellings so 
much that your appetite is whetted for better ones. 
If you are persistent you find them at the head of 
the Markt- Strasse. Crescit indulgens! The taste 
grows upon you. Presently, unless you are very re- 
served or blase, you give a cry of pleasure. You 
have discovered the Brusttuch, a crooked late-Gothic 
gildhouse named after an indispensable part of the 
local peasant's costume. It has an amazingly sharp, 
high ridge. Its lowest story is of picturesque rough 
stone ; its second is half-timbered and filled with such 
homely, humorous carvings as riot along the streets 
of Brunswick. Among them are reliefs of convivial 
monkeys and of witches riding their broomsticks to 
the Brocken. With its wide oriel and flowing lines 
it is a charming example of the old-German patri- 
cian house, and, with its two distinguished neighbors, 
the Bakers' gildhouse and the Kaiserworth, forms 
a group more reminiscent of the houses of Nurem- 
berg than of more northern architecture. 

195 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

The simple Rathaus harmonizes well with this 
trio. It is especially interesting for its series of fres- 
cos, thought to be from the hand of the Nuremberg 
painter Wohlgemuth (although a few learned Ger- 
mans deny this with frenzied gesticulations.) An- 
other notable possession of the Rathaus is an old iron 
cage called "The Biting Cat," now unhappily fallen 
into innocuous desuetude. It was made to accom- 
modate a pair of shrews. 

It is well known of the fountain outside that if, 
at midnight, you knock three times on its lowest 
basin the devil will appear at once and fly away with 
you to his home in the neighboring Rammelsberg. 

Small wonder that he is such a powerful person- 
age here, for Goslar's churches are singularly unat- 
tractive. Perhaps they were too much overshadowed 
by the vanished cathedral. But the Church of the 
New Work contains an interesting old fresco, and 
its eastern apse boasts a gem of a colonnade. 

Beyond the walls is a remarkable grotto chapel 
called Clus, hewn by hand in a mighty boulder. 
Legend says that the gigantic St. Christopher used 
to haunt the region between Goslar and Harzburg. 
One day he felt a pebble in his shoe — and emptied 
out this very boulder. Many years afterward it was 
made into a chapel by Agnes, the wife of Henry III, 
as penance for a sad mistake. For she once had her 

196 



GOSLAR IN THE HARZ 

oldest servant executed for the theft of some jew- 
elry; and when this was found years afterward in a 
raven's nest, she thought to save her soul by found- 
ing the Clus Chapel and the Abbey of St. Peter, 
whose ruins may still be seen hard by. 

From here one reenters the city by the Broad 
Gate, the most elaborate fragment of the original 
fortifications. Its four massive towers made an en- 
trance worthy to welcome any emperor; and one 
imagines the splendor of the Holy Roman Empire 
pouring in in brilliant cavalcade between those huge 
bastions and defying all the world to follow. 



197 




VI 
HILDESHEIM AND FAIRYLAND 

L EW of the older 'German cities, like Gos- 
lar and Lubeck, show themselves at once 
to the traveler for what they are. As a 
rule, like Danzig, Bautzen, and Augs- 
burg, they are coy and cover their charms 
witH a cheap new veil. But of these, none is coyer 
than Hildesheim. Of course I did not expect the 
railway station to be romantic. But my hotel win- 
dow, near by, gave on the town, and one glance 
brought a pang of disappointment. Almost the 
first sound I had heard on arrival was the clatter of a 
pianola brutally enlivening a cinematograph show; 
and now the first glimpse of the home of the Thou- 
sand-year Rose-bush was of an ordinary New Eng- 
land village with its deadly commonplace houses and 
its homely steeples. 

A few steps tbward the center of things destroyed 

198 



HILDESHEIM AND FAIRYLAND 

this disillusion, only to bring another. I had ex- 
pected to find Hildesheim a smaller, more exquisite 
edition of my favorite German city — a little Bruns- 
wick de luxe with a jeweled clasp. Instead I found 
its counterpart, and within the next few hours was 
forced to reconstruct all my ideas of the place. 

Brunswick is democratic, a city of plain people. 
Hildesheim is aristocratic, as befits the ancient see of 
a line of great prelate princes. Brunswick's charm 
is mainly Gothic; Hildesheim's, mainly Roman- 
esque and Renaissance. There the churches are sub- 
servient to the wonderful, homogeneous old streets 
about them; the houses are sincere expressions of 
strong individuality. Here the real key-note of the 
place is struck by such magnificent church interiors 
as St. Michael's and St. Godehard's. Many of these 
houses are richer, more picturesque than those of 
Brunswick, but the rich facades are in glaring con- 
trast to the poorer ones, and often show, instead of 
personal initiative, a desire to emulate the pomp, the 
learning, the solemn circumstance of the bishops. 
In Hildesheim there is a marked absence of the fa- 
miliar, informal little courts, the grotesque friezes, 
the homely, humorous carvings and mottos that 
make Brunswick such an intimate place. Inscrip- 
tions are there a-plenty, but most of them are pomp- 
ous or stilted, ill-natured, didactic, or melancholy, 

199 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

and a great many are in ostentatious Latin. It is 
clear that the old Hildesheimers were not so happy 
in their exclusiveness as were the Brunswickers in 
their democracy. Instead of the genial clowns and 
mermen, the tugs of war, the musical asses and apes, 
the domesticated gargoyles, behold reliefs of the 
Virtues and the Vices, of the Arts, Sciences, Ele- 
ments, Seasons, — all with neat Latin labels that re- 
mind one of the scrolls issuing from the mouths of 
figures in old-fashioned woodcuts. And the few 
saints left over from Gothic times keep shockingly 
indiscriminate company, not with Low-German sin- 
ners, but with the gods of Greece and Rome. I have 
known no other private architecture with so strong a 
didactic and homiletic flavor as that which these Hil- 
desheimers assimilated from their pious overlords. 

But if the place gives one the impression of being 
always on her good behavior and a trifle self-con- 
scious, she more than makes up for it by her wealth 
of legend. Fairy fingers have woven gleaming 
strands about many of her choicest treasures, and in 
the length and breadth of the German land there are 
few legends more lovely than that of the origin of 
Hildesheim. This is one of the many variants : 

In the year 815, Emperor Louis the Pious, son of 
Charlemagne, was hunting in the outskirts of the 
Hercynian forest, and, in following a white buck, 

200 



HILDESHEIM AND FAIRYLAND 

he outdistanced his followers and lost both his 
quarry, his horse, and his way in the Innerste River. 
The Emperor swam to shore and wandered alone un- 
til he came to a mound sacred to the ancient Saxon 
goddess Hulda — a beautiful mound covered with 
her own flower, the wild rose. Again and again he 
sounded his hunting-horn, but there was no answer. 
Then he drew from his bosom a casket containing 
relics of the Holy Virgin, and, while praying before 
it for .rescue, fell into a deep sleep. When he awoke 
the mound where he lay was covered with snow, 
although it was high summer and everything about 
was green. The roses on the sacred mound were 
blooming more brilliantly than ever. He looked for 
the reliquary and found it frozen fast amid the 
thorns of a great rose-bush. Then the Emperor knew 
that the heathen goddess had, "by shaking her bed," 
sent the holy snow in token that the Christian god- 
dess should now be worshiped in her stead. When 
his followers finally discovered him he had resolved 
to build on that mound a cathedral to the Virgin 
Mary. And to-day on the choir of this cathedral 
that very rose-bush is still in bloom. 

All this is by no means a pure fiction. For it is 
certain that the spot was a headquarters of the old 
Saxon religion; that Louis transferred the Eastpha- 
lian see here from Elze in 815 ; and that nobody 

201 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

knows how many centuries old the roots of the fa- 
mous rose-bush really are. Where it grows is the 
birthplace of Hildesheim, a name thought to mean 
"Hulda's Home," and the old cloisters that inclose it 
are worthy of their situation. In the autumn, when 
their smothering of woodbine breaks forth into scar- 
let and old rose and carnelian, into all pinks and 
oranges and purples — brought out the more by the 
deep browns and grays and yellows of the double 
arcade — it needs neither the Thousand-year Rose- 
bush, nor the crumbling tombs, nor the charming 
Gothic chapel, with its devout gargoyles, that is set 
in the midst, to make this cloister garden one of the 
sweetest shrines ever dedicated to the contemplative 
life. 

Out of this beautiful beginning grew a city that 
has, ever after, seemed suffused with the romaunt of 
the rose. The first small, fortified settlement about 
the cathedral, called the Domburg, was surrounded 
with rose-hedges which became the godmothers of 
such streets as Long-hedge, Short-hedge, Flood- 
hedge, and the trio of Rose-hedges (Rosenhagen I, 
II, and III). And there is a tradition that each of 
the cathedral clergy is warned of his own death three 
days beforehand by a white rose which he finds in his 
choir-stall. 

In the eighteenth century, sad to relate, the an- 

202 




CATHEDRAL CLOISTERS. THE THOUSAND-YEAR ROSE-BUSH 



HILDESHEIM AND FAIRYLAND 

cient, austere splendor of the cathedral interior was 
transformed into a baroque splendor that shows par- 
ticularly tawdry and frivolous against the few 
remains of Romanesque construction and the no- 
table treasures of early art that fill the building. 
Though the architecture of this cathedral is not .to 
be compared with Brunswick's, yet the place is fully 
as interesting. For here the famous bronze doors, 
the Christ Pillar, and the font far outshine the trin- 
ity of Romanesque sculptures there. 

The bronze doors were finished in 1015 by St. 
Bernward of Hildesheim, one of the most illustrious 
of German bishops, celebrated as teacher, architect, 
sculptor, and friend of three emperors. Standing 
before them, one is filled with astonishment on re- 
membering that this was the virgin appearance of 
art in a region hitherto artless. It is a miracle of 
precocity. For these reliefs, though crude, are far 
more direct and elemental, and touch the heart more 
deeply, in their naive blend of humor and pathos and 
religious fervor, than Ghiberti's doors on the Flor- 
entine baptistery. 

During his visit to Rome in the year 1001, St. 
Bernward borrowed his main idea from the doors of 
St. Sabina ; and his Christ Pillar was executed in the 
spirit of the Column of Trajan. 

It is peculiarly fitting that these works, represent- 

205 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

ing the miraculous birth of German art, should be 
accompanied by the thirteenth-century font that 
stands for the culmination of Romanesque brazen 
sculpture in the North. 

In the nave hangs a reminder of that Bishop 
Hezilo who urged on his bloody band from the high 
altar of Goslar. It is an immense chandelier in the 
form of the heavenly Jerusalem, a battlemented 
ring-wall of exquisite filigree broken by twelve 
towers and twelve portals. 

Before the elaborate Renaissance reredos stands 
a column of polished stone bearing a Madonna. The 
people of Hildesheim firmly believe it to be a part of 
the original Irmensaule that stood near the city in 
the Dark Ages and marked the principal shrine of 
the Old Saxon god Irmin. They say that Charle- 
magne cast it down and broke it with his own hand 
in his vigorous attempt to Christianize the heathen 
— a conception inhumanly abused by certain Ger- 
man professors who have an almost puritanical ha- 
tred of the glamourous and force every attractive 
idea to stand trial for its life. In their despite I 
prefer to believe that this is the authentic heathen 
pillar, and that the relics of the Virgin were really 
frozen by the sacred snow in the rose-bush outside, 
more than a millennium ago. 

At any rate, one may see in the treasury the very 

206 



HILDESHEIM AND FAIRYLAND 

reliquary that contained those relics, besides many 
other precious things, such as the gemmed fork of 
Charlemagne, a sliver of the true cross, the head of 
Oswald, King of Northumbria, who died in the year 
642, the geometry from which the holy Bernward 
taught Emperor Otto III. And all at once you 
come upon a thing that transports you in a trice be- 
yond the Alps into the hush of another holy treasure- 
house below the hill of Fiesole. It is a perfect little 
altar by Fra Angelico. 

Worn out by the incessant demands of so much 
beauty, I left the building to rest for an hour on the 
smooth lawns, beneath the venerable lindens of the 
Domhof. The treasury had taken me to "the warm 
South" ; but here for the first time on my pilgrimage 
I caught a breath of the peaceful seclusion, the idyl- 
lic secret charm of the English cathedral close. 

A citizen came to sit beside me and to relate* how, 
in that very place, until the middle of the eighteenth 
century, the boys of Hildesheim had annually 
played at Charlemagne and the Heathen, a game in 
which' the Irmensaule in effigy was finally stoned 
and overthrown. 

The old gentleman pointed to the gilded cathedral 
cupola that sheltered the old heathen pillar. "That 
also has a story," he said. "In the year 1367 the 
Brunswickers surprised us in overpowering num- 

207 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

bers. Then good Bishop Gerhardt put himself at 
the head of our little army and prayed to the Holy 
Virgin. 'It is for thee to decide now whether thou 
wilt live henceforth under a roof of thatch or of 
gold/ As our men approached the great host of 
Brunswick, they were dismayed but the Bishop 
stretched forth his left arm, ciying, 'Leven Kerle, 
truret nich, hier hebbe ek noch dusend in miner 
Maven.' ('My dear fellows, be not dismayed. I 
have here a thousand more [men] up my sleeve.') 
Then they knew that the good bishop carried in his 
sleeve Hildesheim's greatest treasure, the reliquary 
of the Virgin, and, taking heart, they put the enemy 
to rout, slaying fifteen hundred of them and captur- 
ing rich spoils. Ever since," the old gentleman 
concluded, "our dear Lady has lived under a golden 
roof." 

Not far from this quiet close I found another feast 
of beauty. 

The lawns and gardens surrounding the Church 
of St. Michael meant renewed thoughts of old Eng- 
land, and the interior brought back like a refrain the 
holiest memories of Italy. For though the Roman- 
esque is more truly the national style of Germany 
than any other, yet this most perfect of Northern 
Romanesque interiors cannot help suggesting the 
land of its birth. The alternation of light and dark 

208 




THE NAVE OF ST. MICHAEL'S CHURCH 



HILDESHEIM AND FAIRYLAND 

blocks in the transept arches reminds one of Siena, 
while the pure beauty and variety of the capitals 
take one back to Ravenna. These capitals pass from 
the simple "dice" design of the year 1000 to the 
timid attempts at low relief of the middle, and the 
high relief of the end of the eleventh century, with 
grotesques and even medallions between the angel 
corners. These, in turn, pass into the luxuriant 
stone foliage of the twelfth century, peopled with 
little faces and figures. 

It pays to prowl long in St. Michael's, for there is 
many a surprise in store for the appreciative, such as 
the eight archaic beatitudes over the columns of the 
southern aisle, with their hint of Assyrian influence ; 
or the delightful angels and saints on each side of 
the wall separating the western choir from the 
northern transept; the tombs, the altarpieces, and 
the crypt where Bernward reposes and shows himself 
even here for the saint and artist that he was by the 
flowing Latin hexameters of his own epitaph. It is 
a satisfaction to know that he made his famous doors 
and Christ Pillar for this sanctuary, and that they 
have not, until recent yeafs, been compelled to en- 
dure the baroque cathedral interior. 

St. Michael's crowning glory is the painted 
wooden ceiling of 1180, the only one of its kind 
north of the Alps. It gives the genealogy of Christ 

10 211 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

from Adam down, with a feeling for composition, a 
restraint, and a knowledge of anatomy quite unusual 
in Romanesque painting. And there is a touch, too, 
of the Germany we know. For if you look long 
enough you discover that the tree back of Eve is 
filled with portraits of the five senses, while in 
Adam's tree reposes the Herrgott himself — a con- 
ception truly German in its lack of gallantry. 

It is an uncanny experience to be dreaming alone 
in this church and to be roused by a sudden chorus of 
horrible laughter and heartrending shrieks from the 
insane in the adjoining cloisters, which are now used 
as an asylum. And it is even more distressing to 
visit the cloisters and see the poor souls hurrying 
about distractedly among the foliage and flowers, 
without the least appreciation for the lovely arcades 
and portals where the late Romanesque is so happily 
fused with the early Gothic. 

The Church of the Magdalene is worth visiting 
for the sake of its three treasures: a jeweled cross 
containing splinters of the true cross, and a pair of 
wonderful candlesticks, all the work of Bernward 
and prophetic of the Renaissance goldsmiths of 
Nuremberg. 

It is not often that one city possesses two leading 
examples of the same architectural style. But St. 
Godehard's is one of St. Michael's dearest rivals and 

212 



HILDESHEIM AND FAIRYLAND 

even surpasses the sister church in the purity and 
homogeneity of its ornament, though it has recently 
been disfigured by a great deal of garish paint. It 
has, besides, an interesting portal and a precious 
little treasury. 

The Church of the Cross is one of those fascinat- 
ing churches that are coming more and more to light 
in our day — churches built originally to war not 
against spiritual wickedness, but against flesh and 
blood. For the Kreuz Kirche was originally an out- 
work of the Bishop's Fortress on Cathedral Hill. 
And the chronicler Saxo records that toward the end 
of the eleventh century Bishop Hezilo changed it 
from a home of war (domum belli) to a home of 
peace (domum pads) — a transformation even more 
commendable than that of swords into plowshares. 
May this act not have been in expiation of Hezilo's 
share in the "Blood-bath" at Goslar? 

The town halls of Hildesheim and of Brunswick 
neatly contrast the spirit of the two places. The low, 
level Rathaus of democratic Brunswick is faced with 
a series of ten double arcades, all free and equal. 
Hildesheim's Rathaus sounds a note unmistakably 
aristocratic, with its commanding western gable 
flanked by proud clock- and window-towers. 

The interior at Brunswick is plain; here it is re- 
splendent. And it is a significant fact that the fine 

213 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

frescos of local history and legend, begun by Prell in 
1887, were the pioneers of the recent German revival 
of the old al fresco technique. The building teems 
with legend. 

On the apex of the western facade the Hildes- 
heimer Jungfer, the Maid of Hildesheim, stands 
proudly under a baldachin. She is supposed to be 
no other than the old heathen goddess who sent the 
sacred snow, and who once, in the form of the Holy 
Virgin, appeared to a maiden lost in the woods be- 
yond the wall and led her back to her home. She it 
was who used to stand on the ramparts in time of 
siege and catch the cannon-balls of the foe in her 
apron. So that, out of gratitude, the Hildesheimers 
graved her image on their municipal banner and seal. 

On the clock-tower, below the red-frocked town 
piper, who pipes the halves and trumpets the hours, 
is the head of a Jew who opens and closes his eyes 
and mouth at the sound of the trumpet, as if in pain 
at the thought of another unprofitable hour gone by. 
They call it the head of a would-be traitor who was 
caught in the fact and shut in the Rathaus dungeon 
to die of starvation. 

In the northern wall a measure is chiseled, with 
these words: "Dat is de Garen mathe." ("This is 
the measure for yarn.") You are told that the 
widow of a local yarn-dealer was once wakened by 

214 




"THE OLD-GHRMAN HOUSE" 



HILDESHEIM AND FAIRYLAND 

her late spouse, who complained bitterly that he had 
to suffer so much pain in his present home because, 
in life, he had bought with a long measure and sold 
with a short one. Whereupon he cast an iron ruler 
upon the table, crying, "Dat is de Garen mathe!" 
and vanished. When the widow came to her senses 
the ruler had disappeared, but the measure was 
burned through the table, through all the floors of 
the house, and so deep beneath the cellar that the 
bottom of the hole could not be plumbed. Then the 
magistrate graved the length of the measure upon 
the wall of the Rathaus as an abiding stimulus to 
honesty. It is possible that the moral reaction after 
this incident inspired the rather optimistic inscrip- 
tion on the Kramergildehaus in the Andreas-Platz : 

Weget recht un glike, 

So werdet gi salich un ricke. 

(Weigh justly and equally, which 
Will make you happy and rich.) 

What draws most of us, after all, to Hildesheim is 
not the lure of its churches and public buildings, po- 
tent as it is; but rather the lure of the quaint streets 
and squares, and of the houses where German pri- 
vate architecture touches its zenith. Though these 
distinguished dwellings are not jolly and intimate 

217 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

like Brunswick's, they are more glamourous. These 
narrow, "Haufendorf" streets disengage no least 
hint of Brunswick's democracy, but they are the 
abiding-places of romance. And, touched by the 
shadow of these strange, rich facades, the traveler 
peers instinctively into every coach that clatters by 
for a glimpse of the fairy godmother with her magic 
wand, of the little kobold with the wishing-ring for 
the first who may befriend him, or of an authentic 
local sprite like Hutchen of the large hat, or Huckup 
the bogy-man of Hildesheim, whose statue is under 
the big tree in the Hoher Weg. Nor is this curiosity 
unjustifiable. For what has happened may happen; 
and Hildesheim has, in its day, supplied the stuff for 
many a fairy-tale. ■ There is, for example, the true 
story of the Little Princess : 

Once upon a time there came to Bakermaster 

L in the Goschen-Strasse a beautiful maiden 

begging for work. The old man put on his spec- 
tacles, noted her delicate features and soft hands, 
and sent her about her business. "Thank heaven," 
he cried, "that we no longer need a nurse-maid! 
Now if you were only the sort to do heavy barn and 
field work we might give you a trial." 

The maiden wept bitterly, protesting that nothing 
worthy a servant was foreign to her nature. So the 
kind-hearted baker consented to try her. 

218 



HILDESHEIM AND FAIRYLAND 

She was a decided success. The cows were kept as 
soft and sleek as cats, and no man could keep up 
with her in the field. So that the old couple were 
charmed and loved her as their own daughter. 

When the neighbors dropped in of an evening to 
discuss the hard times and the war over a mug and a 
' pipe, the maiden, who sat by at the spinning-wheel, 
would often join in and talk of emperors and kings 
as though she were quite at home with such folk. 
Then some one would speak up : 

"Maiden, you seem to know the world well. 
Where, then, do you come from?" 

But she would only heave a deep sigh and moisten 
her flax with her tears. 

There was one old fellow who liked to pinch her 
rosy cheeks when no one was looking and call her the 
Little Princess. And presently the whole neighbor- 
hood took up the name. 

One morning the baker's farm-wagon was unload- 
ing before his portal, and the Little Princess was so 
busy with her pitchfork that she did not hear the 
cries and huzzas that suddenly burst forth around 
her. The whole Goschen-Strasse was so packed with 
folk that an apple could n't have fallen to the ground 
(dass kein Apfel mehr zur Erde honnte) . 

A company of gold-laced lackeys made way with 
their silver drum-majors' sticks for a great float 

219 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

filled with more than a hundred Moors and apes 
who rent the air with trumpet and drum. 

Only the Little Princess labored on and took no 
notice. 

Finally came a golden coach-and-six. A beauti- 
ful knight, clad in gold and silver, sprang out, 
caught the Little Princess in his arms, and ex- 
claimed: "Ah, my heart's love, Marianne, our time 
of probation is over! The Kaiser has been beaten, 
and we may now be married !" 

The lackeys sprang to lift her into the coach. 

"But," protested the Little Princess, "only see 
how I look! Let me first change my dress." 

"Nay, nay!" cried the prince, proudly. "This 
dress we will keep forever as a memento." 

Then the prince threw the astonished bakermaster 
a great purse of gold, and they vanished amid the 
acclamations of the populace. 

Though the Goschen-Strasse is one of the plainest 
streets in town, one glance at it will convince any 
skeptic that this story* is true. Such things happen 
inevitably in such a setting. And in wandering 
through the richer streets one's imagination is posi- 
tively overpowered with all the surprising and lovely 
events that have, or ought to have, taken place there. 
It is like walking bodily- through the pages of 
Grimm. 

220 



HILDESHEIM AND FAIRYLAND 

In our day it is the mode to shrug one's shoulders 
at the German Renaissance. And, indeed, what with 
the tenacity of its predecessor the Gothic, and the 
untimely disaster of the Thirty Years' War, the 
style had small chance to mature in the Fatherland. 

But no one who knows such places as Hildesheim 
and Nuremberg, Danzig and Rothenburg — towns 
especially spared in the great war— can feel like scoff- 
ing at the German Renaissance. For there the style 
makes up in picturesqueness for its departure from 
the canons of Italian proportion. It is like the 
young poet at college who abjures conic sections to 
go in for literature and music. Its faults are simply 
the extravagances of romantic youth. For the Ger- 
man Renaissance is, at its best, eternally young and 
eternally romantic. 

It must have been a dim realization that this fresh 
charm scarcely befitted their proud, pious aristocracy 
that made the Hildesheimers try to counteract its 
effect with solemn, pompous, pedantic carvings and 
inscriptions. 

The "Old-German House," for instance, at the 
head of the Oster-Strasse is a delightful composition 
of three sharp gables with a great bay-window as 
high as the roof and four tiers of wooden friezes, 
inimitable at a distance. But these turn out to be 
representations of the elements and the heavenly 

223 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

bodies, and prominent among them is Death with a 
youth, a sage, and this motto : 

Hodie mihi — eras tibi. 
(To-day for me — to-morrow for thee.) 

These wide, lofty bays are as characteristic of Hil- 
desheim as small, delicate oriels are of Nuremberg. 
And it would be hard to decide which kind is the 
more picturesque. There are two fine bays in the 
Wedekind House in the Markt, with a seven-storied 
gable rising between them. The whole house is over- 
spun with filigree like one of the elaborate reli- 
quaries in the cathedral, with an effect indescribably 
vivacious. But these, floor by floor, are the subjects 
of the carvings : 

I. Truth, Justice, Charity, Hope, Wealth, Pru- 
dence, Fortitude, Courage, Temperance, Patience, 
Faith. 

II. Grammar, Dialectics, Rhetoric, Arithmetic, 
Music, Woman with Pitcher and Glass, Geometry, 
Woman with Soap-bubble, Astrology. 

III. A Tower (earth), A Ship (water), A Thun- 
derbolt (fire), Avarice, Air, Sloth, Woman with 
Pitcher, Pride, Luxury, Appetite, Envy, Wrath. 

Even the kind ladies with pitchers, there doubtless 
to moisten these dry abstractions, must have ap- 

224 



HILDESHEIM AND FAIRYLAND 

peared with the sanction of those ecclesiastics who 
opened Hildesheim's first saloon under the auspices 
of the cathedral. 

There are many pious inscriptions, such as : 

Affgunst der lude kann dich nicht schaden, 
was Godt will das muss geraden. 

(Man's malice cannot injure you; 

What God intends that must go through.) 

Here is a hint of the truculent, misanthropic note 
that reechoes constantly in the inscriptions of these 
aristocrats and would-be aristocrats. 

The Wedekind House shows the more elaborate 
and nervous by contrast with the dignified Gothic 
"Temple House" next door, with its narrow, tre- 
foiled windows, its great spaces of repose, and the 
loopholed watch-turrets on each side. 

And the Roland Fountain before them helps to 
harmonize the two houses, combining as it does the 
decorativeness of the one with the nobility and calm 
of the other. 

Across the Markt is a corner which every lover of 
Germany holds as a hallowed spot. Here stood the 
Butchers' gildhouse — the Knochenhaueramtshaus 
— famed as the finest half-timbered building in the 
land. It was a splendid specimen of the early Re- 

225 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

naissance, and, through its model in the leading mu- 
seums, the world has come to love the rhythmical 
proportions of its boldly projecting stories, its sharp, 
lofty gable, its purely modeled corbels and friezes. 
So that its destruction by fire early in 1908 was 
mourned as an international calamity. Through 
this fire one of the mottos on the eastern facade was 
given a lamentable architectural application: 

Arm und reich, 

Der Tod macht Alles gleich. 

(For poor and rich the sequel 
By Death is brought out equal.) 

It would be useless to attempt describing within 
these limits all of the most fascinating among the 
four hundred noteworthy old houses of Hildesheim. 
It must suffice merely to mention a few leading 
types. 

On the corner where one comes to the Hoher Weg 
is the Ratsapotheke, with its long-winded Latin 
hexameters and German doggerel and with one of 
Hildesheim's few fine Renaissance portals. Farther 
on is the old Ratsweinschenke, with solemn biblical 
illustrations of the wine business such as the Noah 
episode and the spies importing grapes from the 
Promised Land. 

226 







THE PILLAR HOUSE IN THE AXDREAS-PLATZ 



HILDESHEIM AND FAIRYLAND 

The Hildesheimers liked to copy the architecture 
as well as the customs of their friends the fairies. 
The facade of the Kaiserhaus is a thing as curiously 
inverted as a "goop." For the elaborate stone oriel 
and portal reproduce the wood-carver's technique so 
well that they seem petrified, and the expanse of 
wall filled with medallions of Roman emperors 
seems as if copied from some rich ceiling of paneled 
oak. 

These people were fond of building toy streets 
like the Hoken and the Juden-Strasse — streets al- 
most as narrow as the narrowest Venetian lanes; 
streets whose houses, set capriciously askew, almost 
allow opposite neighbors to shake hands from their 
projecting stories. 

They delighted in toy houses like the little one in 
the Andreas-Platz, set perpendicular to the sharply 
sloping street ; or the Pillar House, under which the 
way leads into the square. This beautiful dwelling 
is a veritable picture-book of the Virtues, the Muses, 
and the gods of Rome. One unconsciously expects 
these wooden people to come alive all of a sudden, 
like the gingerbread children on the witch's house in 
"Hansel und Gretel." It might well have really been 
a witch's house ; for many such old persons have been 
done to death in Hildesheim. There is only one 
thing to spoil its delightful atmosphere. It is that 
self-conscious quotation about mens conscia recti. 

229 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

The Hildesheimers were fond of composing an 
amusing line of roofs such as the one northeast of St. 
Andrew's, and of leaving one grand old Gothic 
house (like Trinity Hospital) to temper the vivacity 
of a Renaissance neighborhood like an ancient oak 
set in a grove of silver birches. 

They were fond of packing alleys full of romantic, 
strangely formed gables, and winding them allur- 
ingly away into the unknown as they wound the 
Eckemecker-Strasse away from the dominating 
tower of St. Andrew's. This street name is onomat- 
opoetic; for, with its suggestion of bleating flocks, 
it means "The Street of Sheepskin Tanners." It is 
a name fitter for laughing Brunswick than for long- 
faced Hildesheim. Here stands one of the most fas- 
cinating houses in town, the Roland Hospital, with 
its tall, characteristic bay and its five far-projecting 
stories adorned with scenes from the former rural 
life of Simon Arnholt, its builder, such as sheep- 
shearing, hunting, wine-making, pig-sticking, sow- 
ing, and sandbagging the police. At least, I thought 
them police at first, but found later that they were 
only Philistines being smitten with the jaw-bone 
of an ass. And there is an inscription with the same 
old note of defiance, as though whoever built a fine 
house in this place had to become a mark for envious 
tongues : 

230 



HILDESHEIM AND FAIRYLAND 

Wer bawen will an freier strassen, 

muss sich vel unniitz geswetz nich iren lassen. 

(He who would build upon the public walk 
Must not be turned aside by idle talk. ) 



The Schuh-Strasse runs parallel to the Eckemecker- 
Strasse and, in the matter of picturesqueness, is a 
worthy companion. But you will find more note- 
worthy houses by turning down the Bohlweg — 
which derives its name from the planks, or Bohlen, 
laid down in olden times for crossing the marshy 
remnants of the cathedral moat. Here, at the head 
of the Kreuz-Strasse, is the Domschenke, or Cathe- 
dral Wine-house; and opposite is its first rival, the 
Golden Angel, a charming early Renaissance build- 
ing called "Der Alte Schaden" (The Old Damage), 
because it damaged the monopoly of the Dom- 
schenke. It bears a relief of five horses straining 
at three wine-butts; and behind them appears mine 
host solemnly reckoning up his gains. 

Not many doors down the Kreuz-Strasse is the 
tavern called "Der Neue Schaden" (the New Dam- 
age), the second rival. And a serious rival it was; 
for it introduced into Hildesheim that pale amber 
fluid which was destined never to check its mad ca- 
reer until it became the national drink. This fine 
transition facade actually bears humorous carvings. 

231 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

"Fish-tailed persons," writes learned Herr Ger- 
land, "are drinking there and experiencing all the 
effects of drinking, while heads, interposed, reflect 
the impressions which are produced upon them by 
these phenomena." 

No wonder the New Damage was so daring as to 
be humorous, for that jolly tavern was always 
the hotbed of radicalism. And in Luther's time 
it was the headquarters of the Reformation 
Club, which used to make it a base of supplies in 
their horse-play campaigns against the old-fogy 
Catholics. It is easy to imagine what these zealous 
youths must have done to the Reformation chron- 
icler Johannes Oldecop, Dean of the Holy Cross. 
For, upon the f acade of his house around the corner, 
the old gentleman poured out all his bitterness 
against the new faith. His fury may be seen even 
in the jumbled order of the words, which read like 
a Chinese puzzle: 

Anno dm. 1549. Virtus, ecclesia. clerus demon, simonia. 
cessat. turbatur. errat. regnat. dominatur. verbum dni 
manet in eternum nil nisi divinum stabile, humana laborant, 
lignea cum saxis sunt peritura 

(a.d. 1549. Virtue ceases, the church is in an uproar, 
the clergy has gone astray, the devil rules, simony reigns. 
God's word remains for all eternity. The divine alone 
stands. The human is in peril. Wood and stone will pass away.) 

232 




£\\Vtt& S&y^vxjr -"StAC*,. 






THE ECKEMECKHR-STRASSE 



HILDESHEIM AND FAIRYLAND 

Past the Square of the Holy Cross, where on 
December 28, 1221, the boy choristers were still cele- 
brating with bonfires the heathen festival of the win- 
ter solstice (Sonnenwende) , the way leads "Am 
Platz" and down the Friesenstieg to the Braun- 
schweiger-Strasse, with its wealth of interesting 
houses. And at the head of t the long Wollenweber- 
Strasse there comes a sight which one is glad to carry 
away as the final impression of this fairy town. 

Flanked by quaint carven houses, there rises, 
from the old city wall beyond, the beautiful Kehr- 
wieder Turm, or Turn-again Tower. 

Once upon a time when all the world was young, 
the little bell in this Kehrwieder Turm rang out for 
the Maid of Hildesheim as she was wandering, lost, 
in the deep woods down beyond the wall, calling her 
back to her beloved city. 

And to this day, as the Fountain of Trevi calls 
back to the sound of its murmuring waters all who 
have known the Eternal City, so the Kehrwieder 
Turm forever rings out to all who have come under 
the magical spell of Hildesheim— "Turn Again!" 



11 



235 




VII 
LEIPSIC 

» 

N visiting northern Germany the traveler 
usually keeps the Prussian capital as his 
base of operations until he seeks the South 
by way of Saxony. 

After the aggressiveness and modernity 
of Berlin, it is a relief to mingle with the quiet, 
matter-of-fact people of Leipsic, to rest one's eyes 
again on a Renaissance gable, again to loiter in streets 
with quaint and homely names. In many of these old 
names there is a flavor of poetry that brings the 
stranger at once into terms of intimacy with the 
town. They touch the imagination because they 
were christened naturally by the wit of the people, 
and always christened for their most salient feature. 
Windmill Alley led in bygone days to a mill be- 
yond the wall and ditch; along Sparrow Mountain, 
a thoroughfare almost as flat as Sahara, ran a prison 
wall, crowded winter and summer with sparrows. 
Begging Street pierced the slums. In Barefoot 

236 



LEIPSIC 

Alley was a cloister of ascetic monks, and the chiv- 
alry of the Middle Ages lived in Knight Street. 
"Along Milk Island" was over against a dairy, while 
from Pearl-stringer Alley, Tub-maker Street, Bell- 
caster Street, Night-watchman Street, and Rubber 
Alley the corresponding occupations have not yet 
wholly passed away. In olden times one small lane 
actually bore three names simultaneously: Town 
Piper Alley, Constable Alley, and Midwife Alley; 
for these personages all dwelt there. The Briihl, 
called after a Slavic word for swamp, is the only 
street to commemorate the Wendish origin of the 
city and the patience of its builders; but though a 
few of these delightful names have passed away 
through sheer anachronism, enough are left to give 
the place an intimate, Old-World, human flavor. A 
city that preserves a Barefoot Alley deserves well of 
mankind, and I prefer small beer within its shadows 
to the bright new champagne of North Street. 

To one who for a time had half forgotten that the 
larger German cities still held anything old, the 
Princes' House in the Grimmaische-Strasse brought 
a delightful shock of recognition. From those 
round red oriel windows flanking the gable, six- 
teenth-century princes used to display their finery to 
the folk below — student princes who came to study 
in the university round the corner and left their 

237 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

coats of arms among the carvings on the window- 
sills. The house is Leipsic's best example of the 
German Renaissance. 

Through a narrow gulf of street the oldest church 
looks down upon this corner. The Church of St. 
Nicholas was built in 1017, two years after the city- 
was first mentioned in history as Urbs Libzi. Like 
the later churches, it suffered many things during 
the sieges of the Thirty Years' War, but not so sadly 
as from its "restoration" in the "Wig Time." Then 
the jealous vandals of classicism, with a naivete 
pathetic to recall, destroyed what beauty the baroque 
time had spared and threw the beautiful altarpieces 
of Cranach into the loft where Goethe discovered 
them in 1815, publishing the matter with righteous 
wrath. They are now in the museum. 

Opposite the gracious green of St. Nicholas's 
tower is a hearty, rustic kind of architecture too 
seldom seen in cities, a red-timbered house with 
piquant gables, and a carved bay-window in rococo 
crowned by the motto, 

Ohn' Gottes Gunst all Bau'n umsunst. 
(By God ungraced, all building 's waste.)i 

The roof, broken by little gable-windows, leads the 
eye onward to the vivacity of old Leipsic's sky-line 
—red tiles tossed into heaps and flowing together as 

238 



LEIPSIC 

in a choppy sea, yet with a large unity, as if com- 
posed by a modern French sculptor of the rugged 
school. 

Next door is the gaily frescoed facade of a peas- 
ants' inn, "The Village Jug," with uncouth win- 
dows of glass stained in every sense, the head of a 
red ox serving for signboard; while over beyond the 
church is a Renaissance gable with three superim- 
posed orders of classical columns, its ancient colors 
quite worn away. For in the sixteenth century 
these stone facades were all painted, "mit gar kunst- 
reichen und lustigen Gemalde gebauet und ausge- 
putzet," writes an old chronicler. (Builded and. 
furbished with paintings "real art-rich" and jolly.) 

Passages as narrow as those of Hamburg run 
through baroque courtyards to the Reichs-Strasse — 
the Via Imperii of the Middle Ages — one of the two 
principal merchant highways through the Holy 
Roman Empire. This is richer than the Nikolai- 
Strasse in such facades as the "Castle Cellar," with 
its massive, undulating gable, its flat-arched doors of 
worm-eaten, iron-bound wood, and its barred, diag- 
onal window. 

From the Grimmaische-Strasse close at hand I 
entered a large court and warmed one of Leipsic's 
reticent sons gradually into garrulity. 

"Look about you," he said. "In olden times this 
Hof was called 'Little Leipsic,' just as Leipsic was 

239 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

then called 'Little Paris.' During the fairs the cost- 
liest articles of luxury were sold here, and it was the 
resort of fashion. Behold !" He pointed out a 
half -hidden door. "I advise you to enter. You 
will see the most interesting nook in town." 

I groped my way down a crooked passage into a 
wine-cellar the Romanesque vaulting of which, mel- 
low with old colors, was upheld by a single pillar 
covered with manuscripts. I spelled out a signa- 
ture. It read "J. W. von Goethe." On the walls 
were pictures of the poet, a black silhouette of his 
student days, a musty print of Doctor Faustus. Be- 
wildered, I sat down and strove to conjure up a 
sophomoric acquaintance with "Wahrheit und Dich- 
tung." Then the waiter brought a bottle labeled 
"Auerbach's Keller," and with a gasp of joy I real- 
ized that this was the immortal den where Mephis- 
topheles once bored holes in the table and made red 
and white wine spurt in fountains over the good 
burghers. Down in an ancient sub-cellar was a 
fresco from the time of the Thirty Years' War. 
Doctor Faustus was seated, with a convivial com- 
pany and quaint musical instruments, above the fol- 
lowing inscription: 

Vive, bibe, obgraecare, memor Fausti hujus et hujus 
Poenae. Aderat claudo haec — ast erat ampla — gradu. 

Freely rendered: 

240 



1 m 




k 




IH^H^ 






LEIPSIC 

Live, drink, go to the devil ; mindful of Faustus' damnation. 
It had a step that was halting, but it came swiftly enough. 

Another scene showed the doctor galloping out 
of the arched entrance on a cask accompanied by this 
doggerel: 

Doktor Faust zu dieser Frist 
aus Auerbachs Keller geritten ist 

auf einem Fass mit Wein geschwind 
welches gesehn viel Menschenkind 

solches durch subtile Kraft gethan 
und des Teufels Lohn empfing daran. 

These lines might be paraphrased: 

At this season Dr. Faust 

Out of Auerbach's Cellar coursed 

On a wine-cask running wild, 
Seen by many a mother's child — 

Subtle artist at his play — 
And the devil was to pay. 

It appears that tradition actually connected some 
old master of Black Art with Auerbach's Cellar, 
which he used as a stable, to the confusion of all 
honest citizens. Toward the end of the sixteenth 
century the tradition was transferred to the still 
more legendary Faustus, and in this romantic set- 
ting, more than two centuries later, the student 

243 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

Goethe met with the shade of his greatest hero. 
There is a long subterranean passage still leading 
from the sub-cellar to the university; and, what is 
even more shocking, another runs to the site of a 
former convent in the neighborhood. 

Behind the Old Rathaus opposite is the Nasch- 
Markt, or Candy Market. Near a statue of Goethe 
stands the old exchange, an early example of the 
sandstone baroque that was imported from Dresden 
and began to flourish after the barren times of the 
Thirty Years' War. Much of this architecture is 
yet visible in the northeast corner of the Old Market 
and in the patrician houses of Katharinen-Strasse, 
the Fifth Avenue of the eighteenth century. 
Strangely enough, the style has almost disappeared 
from among the dwellings of Dresden, and now 
Leipsic is richer than any other large German city 
in private baroque architecture. Even two hundred 
years ago the French and Italian student journeyed 
hither to study this gay, new art that was transform- 
ing low, dingy rooms into spacious, brilliant halls 
and chambers with great windows flamboyant in 
fruit, flowers, leaves, and shells, and tasseled lambre- 
quins; with portals topped by urns of plenty bulg- 
ing in significant relation to the well-fed pillars 
below — an art evolved directly from the interior 
decoration of the period. 

244 



LEIPSIC 

The Old Market is dominated by the Old Rathaus, 
a Renaissance building with many brick gables, 
dusky tiles, and a duskier green tower which are 
devoutly worshiped by every true Leipsicker. Yet 
somehow it lacks the atmosphere of poetry which 
one expects in a Rathaus of its age and traditions. 
It is solid, matter-of-fact, mildly pleasing, like the 
average citizen, and appeals little more than he to 
the imagination until, inside, one sees the small pil- 
lared balcony, "the pipers' chair," where the town 
pipers used to play at patrician and plebeian festivi- 
ties in the days when Leipsickers loved to dance in 
the great hall { cc ufs Rathaus tanzen"). 

There is more atmosphere about the house on the 
Bruhl where young Goethe used to court his 
Gretchen, the awakener of his genius; and, signifi- 
cantly 'enough, on Katchen Schonkopf's roof a 
well-weathered Apollo stands above Romanesque 
gateways and gratings, pointing toward heaven. The 
Bruhl is a distinguished street. At Number 3 I 
entered, walking between rails into a Hof full of 
trucks and meal. And, set in a wall of brick and 
cement, was a simple tablet with the inscription: 



In this house was born 

Richard Wagner 

May 22, 1813 

245 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

On a hillock, perched above a picturesque line of 
roofs, the Church of St. Matthew is grateful to eyes 
wearied with the levelness of Leipsic. Here as in 
all flat lands every elevation is cherished, and an 
almost imperceptible rise in the Promenade-Ring, 
famous for its view of the New Rathaus, has been 
popularly christened the Promenade Wart. Indeed, 
in seeking the Schiller House in Gohlis, I was 
directed "bergauf (literally, "up the mountain") 
along a road where the rain-water was standing in 
pools. The site of St. Matthew's is more remark- 
able than its architecture, for the church is based on 
the ruins of Leipsic's first citadel, and looks over 
across the Pleisse to little Naundorfchen, which was 
a swampy fishing hamlet of Wends when the first 
Teutonic pioneers wandered here. 

A Nuremberg astrologer once found, on consult- 
ing the stars, that the Germans discovered Leipsic 
on Sunday, April 16, 541 a.d., at 9.41 a.m.; but the 
less exact historians agree in dating this event about 
the year 700. 

As in so many German towns, the Promenade- 
Ring encircles the original city, converting the 
ancient wall and ditch into a girdle of turf and 
foliage. In the Historical Museum are some mel- 
low, enameled tiles with curious reliefs which dec- 
orated the medieval rampart. Such a transforma- 

246 



LEIPSIC 

tion symbolizes the unmilitary spirit of this place of 
commerce and music. Although Leipsic is called 
"The Battle-field of the Nations" and a huge monu- 
ment is being built outside the city to commemorate 
the bloody victory over Napoleon in 1813, war talk 
is not considered good form. Soldiers are seldom 
seen in public, and the officer hastens into civilian 
garb as soon as he may. Here the music-pen has 
always been mightier than the sword, and the Saxons 
are as proud of their Church of St. Thomas as the 
Prussians are of their "Lion Monument" to Wil- 
liam I. For this plain Gothic church might almost 
be called the cradle of modern music. From 1723 
until his death in 1750 Bach was its cantor and com- 
posed many of his greatest works for its services. 
He was director as well of the school for choristers, 
and even to-day it is an event to hear the boys of the 
Thomas School sing their Saturday motet in the old 
church. 

Bach needed all of his creative power, for when he 
came, the musical resources of Leipsic consisted of 
four town pipers and three "art-fiddlers" — called 
"Kunst Geiger," to distinguish them from the or- 
dinary musician. The town pipers drew a muni- 
cipal salary, and their oath of office made curious 
reading. They swore to pipe for all church services, 
to sound the hours from the Rathaus tower, and to 

249 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

provide the music for weddings and other festivities 
in the Rathaus "with patience and without extor- 
tion." They swore not to bemean their art by piping 
wantonly in the street nor to sleep out of town with- 
out the permission of the mayor. 

When Bach came, he complained to the authori- 
ties in an amusing letter that of the four town pipers 
one blew the hautboy, two the trumpet, and the 
fourth did not blow at all ("gar nicht blast"), but 
fiddled first violin. Of the three "art-fiddlers" sup- 
ported by the church, one fiddled second violin. Two, 
on the other hand, fiddled not at all, but blew sec- 
ond hautboy — and bassoon. ("Die beiden wie- 
derum gar nicht geigen sondern blasen. . . .") 

Out of this chaos the master built the Gewand- 
haus Orchestra, which, in 1743, gave its first concert 
in the old Gewandhaus, or Hall of the Foreign Cloth 
Merchants. In 1835 young Felix Mendelssohn 
took up the baton and taught all Germany to love 
Bach, Handel, Beethoven, and Schubert. He en- 
couraged struggling geniuses like Schumann and 
Gade by playing their works, and his efforts cre- 
ated the famous Leipsic Conservatory in 1843. 
To-day these concerts are given in the new Gewand- 
haus under the direction of Arthur Nikisch, one of 
the foremost of living conductors. 

From every part of the city a round tower of gray 

250 



LEIPSIC 

stone is seen, now through a lane of old gables, or 
down a stretch of Ring, now backing the facades of 
one of the numerous squares — a mighty, rugged 
thing dominating the city, like an all-seeing guardian 
of the public weal. It is the tower of the Pleissen- 
burg, the city's medieval citadel. The Pleissenburg 
was wrecked by the wars of the seventeenth century, 
but the old tower with a fresh top became the nucleus 
of the New Rathaus, the finest modern building in 
Leipsic, and quite worthy of its site. The great 
Renaissance facades are built of the French coquina 
with which Messel has beautified Berlin, and, new 
as the building is, parts of its masonry look as though 
they had weathered the ages and frowned down upon 
"the drums and tramplings of three conquests." 
Two lions of a fairly Grecian majesty ramp at the 
portal, the one clutching a serpent, the other throt- 
tling a limp dragon. But they perform these func- 
tions like duties, and with no vulgar, military zest. 
"Who could bear to imagine our city," writes 
Wustmann, a historian of twenty years ago, "with- 
out the portly tower of .its Pleissenburg and the im- 
memorial gray of its gable-crowned Rathaus?" 
Since then, alas! both have been severely "improved." 
The Old Rathaus has been taken apart and put 
together again, its crown of gables emerging spick 
and span from out their immemorial gray; while the 

251 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

portly neck of the Pleissenburg has received a new 
body and a neat copper head. 

Across the river Pleisse, offsetting the spirited 
walls of the New Rathaus, rises the Reichsgericht, 
the Supreme Court of the Empire, a cool, dignified, 
poiseful structure, a judicial and monumental count- 
erpart of the new Gewandhaus, the University 
Library, the School of Arts and Crafts, and the 
Conservatory, which are all huddled together in the 
"concert quarter." But for a tradesman-like econ- 
omy of space these buildings might have been com- 
posed into an effective scheme. One is thankful, 
however, that this economy saved the Supreme 
Court from being overloaded with ornament in the 
Northern style. 

Leipsic is no town of the nouveau riche. There is 
nothing tawdry about it; and mingled with its 
homely intimacy is that air of elegance and good 
taste to be found only among folk of breeding. The 
proverbial Saxon cunning which one misses in Dres- 
den is in evidence here among the lower classes. In 
their lack of any striking local characteristics these 
Leipsickers symbolize their central position in the 
heart of the land. And just as Luther made the 
standard speech of Germany out of their official 
language, so they have made themselves types of the 
average German. The Leipsicker has known how 

252 



LEIPSIC 

to fuse Hessian traits with those of Wurtemberg, 
Prussian with Bavarian, simplicity with the love of 
elegance, business with music and poetry and 
scholarship. His generous instinct for the common 
municipal good has made him a loyal son of the 
Empire. He is not so much a Saxon as a German. 
"There is no other great city in the land," writes 
August Sach, "that more fully represents real Ger- 
manism in its universality." 

True, Leipsic has produced such extraordinary 
men as Leibnitz and Wagner, and attracted to itself 
Bach, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Hiller, Goethe, 
Schiller, and Gellert. Yet the Leipsicker is an ex- 
tremely normal type, and normal types seldom fail 
to be colorless. The folk have no great savoir-faire 
and are scarcely more charming than the sharp, 
witty, omniscient people of Berlin. But, unlike the 
Berliners, they do not outrage the foreign breast, 
for they are not malicious. They are simply color- 
less, like a sensible merchant who has failed to make 
a sale. On the whole a sturdy German conscience 
makes their deeds better than their words. Ask for 
a direction on the street, and the Leipsicker will 
answer indifferently, looking the other way. But 
five minutes later, when you have forgotten him, he 
will surprise you from the rear with another direc- 
tion. In this ungracious way he will shadow you 

253 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

through the town with the best will in the world. 
But it is advisable not to change your mind, for he 
will see that you arrive at the place of first aspira- 
tion, though it take* the afternoon and the police. 

Characteristics so negative as the Leipsicker's may 
perhaps throw light on his love of music, an art 
which returns its devotees more spiritual stimulus 
than any other for a given imaginative effort. 

Through its Messen, or fairs, Leipsic has become 
one of the most important business centers of Ger- 
many. Here crossed the two important old trade 
routes between Poland and Thuringia, and between 
Bohemia and North Germany. From Otto the 
Rich, Margrave of Meissen, the town obtained a 
monopoly of fairs, which was largely extended in 
1497 by the Emperor Maximilian. These fairs 
grew rapidly, and came to be the largest functions 
of their kind in Europe. Spring and autumn the 
booth-filled squares were crowded with the costumes 
and clamorous with the tongues of all nations. Even 
since the advent of the railway era, the spring and 
autumn fairs have remained important for the trade 
in furs, toys, and the other goods which must be seen 
before being bought. But in 1906 the booths were 
banished outside the Frankfort Gate, and now the 
fair-time interest centers in the Grimmaische- and 
Peters- Strassen and the Neumarkt. Here the 5000 

254 




THE NEW RATHAUS FROM THE PROMEXADE-R1XG 



LEIPSIC 

wholesale merchants have their headquarters. The 
houses flame with posters, and the merchants per- 
form a sort of college-boy parade through the 
streets, clothed as for a masquerade ball and howling 
their wares to the accompaniment of every unmusical 
instrument known in the musician's purgatory. "A 
heathen scandal is that!" confided an old Leipsicker 
to me. 

Even more important than the fair is the book- 
trade, for since the middle of the eighteenth century 
Leipsic has been the publishing center of Germany. 
There are almost 1000 local publishers and dealers 
in printed matter; there are 190 printers; and at 
Jubilate 11,475 book dealers are represented in the 
handsome building of the Book Exchange. 

This tremendous trade is due in part to the au- 
thority of the 500-year-old University on the Augus- 
tus-Platz. The venerable home of this institution 
was recently destroyed in a "restoration" ; though in 
its chapel there remain some noteworthy statues, and 
a precious Gothic portrait of Dietzmann, the Mar- 
grave of Meissen who, in 1307, was assassinated in 
St. Thomas's. 

The museum opposite is famous as the home of 
Max Klinger's Beethoven, the greatest achievement 
of recent German sculpture. Besides the Cranachs, 
a Rembrandt, and a fresco from Orvieto, there is 

12 257 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

little old art of interest. The gallery owns the 
original cartoons of Preller's Odyssey cycle in 
Weimar, and Uhde's tenderest work, "Suffer Little 
Children." There is Hartmann's whimsical bust of 
Schumann, and Kolbe's of Bach, both made for 
Leipsic's memorable music-room at the St. Louis 
Exposition. And there are Klinger's early experi- 
ments in colored marble — the Salome, the Cassan- 
dra, and the Bathing Girl. But the one part of 
indoor Leipsic that lives most vividly in my memory 
is the room where the pallid spirit of Beethoven 
dreams forever on a throne of blue and bronze and 
ivory. 

Out of doors the most attractive part of town to 
me is Naundorfchen. There is something of Venice 
and Amsterdam and old Hamburg in the way it 
nestles down to the curving, canal-like river, with 
its charming, nondescript houses on piles. Back 
from the tiny cottages on the tiny river, with their 
glamourous windows, whence old men fish the live- 
long day, and with their blooming, unordered gar- 
dens full of romping children, the roofs swing tier 
on tier in a hundred gracious curves, with a lilt and 
an Old- World grace that recall the roofs of Nurem- 
berg. A ramshackle skiff floating below Naundorf- 
chen— that is the place to rid one's feet of the last 
grain of modern, metropolitan dust — that is the place 

258 




ON THF-: PLE1SSE IN THE NAUNDORFCHEN QUARTER 



LEIPSIC 

to ruminate the strange history of Doctor Faustus, 
or to discover in some black-letter book a lyric such as 
this by the dusty poet Golmeyer: 

Leipzic die furnehm Handels Statt, 
ein Windisch Volk erbawet hat, 
welchs man Soraben hat genandt 
das weit und breit worden bekandt. 
Es war zwar Liptz ihr erster Nam, 
den sie vom Lindenbusch bekam, 
so in der Gegend g'standen ist, 
wie man hiervon g'schrieben list. 

(Leipsic, the stately town of trade, 
Was by a Wendish people made, 
A people that were Sorbs yclept, 
Whose fame about the land hath crept. 
Liptz was indeed its earliest name, 
Which from a wood of lindens came 
That stood in the vicinity, 
As all the scribes of old agree. ) 



261 




VIII 
MEISSEN 

HERE were roses as large as hollyhocks 
in the station garden at Meissen, and the 
fragrance of new-mown hay rilled the air. 
We were warmly greeted by the ticket- 
taker, a gentle spirit with beautiful eyes, 
who kindly carried our bags to the hotel above the 
Elbe. 

We strolled down to a shore vaguely littered with 
boats, fishing-nets, and rude carts — a strange shore 
lying pallid in the last light of day. High on the 
opposite ridge a spirelet, like a wren's upturned 
beak, was silhouetted against the south. Colin rose 
sheer and mysterious above the backward crags, fall- 
ing away with a quaint effect toward where, far dis- 
tant, a windmill on the sky-line beckoned Dresden 
with fantastic fingers, while the crimson lights of the 
Old Bridge swam in a shimmer of water that Thau- 
low might have painted. 

262 



MEISSEN 

On the opposite side of the river the town reached 
up in a lovely line to the pile of the Albrechtsburg, 
looming gigantic in the dusk, its cathedral towers 
swathed in a scaffolding exquisitely etched against 
the faint robin's-egg blue of the sky. 

As I gazed, uncouth figures slouched past; and 
by the glow of a pipe I recognized on the Old Bridge 
one of those mysterious Low- Country faces which 
Rembrandt loved. Boats with red and golden eyes 
slipped beneath us, towing strings of serpent -like 
barges; and down the black lane at the bridge-end 
a light flickered in a noble tower, rounding a vision 
that belonged less to Germany than to such lands 
of delight as children explore on the hearth-rug 
before falling embers. 

As the west blackened and lights spread through 
the town, my friend the artist came slowly out of his 
trance. "When I first caught sight of this," he mur- 
mured in his rich Austrian dialect, "it was as though 
a great painter had spread before me a masterpiece, 
saying, 'Na, bist zufrieden?' ['Well, art content?'] 
I shall no more forget it than the moment when I 
first saw the sea, and would have leaped to it through 
my window!" 

Under the sky of early morning, dainty with 
small, tenderly tinted clouds, Meissen became really 
German. Below the Burg the tiles came out in a 

263 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

glow of rare mellowness. Though the atmosphere 
was as soft as that of rural England, the Elbe dis- 
engaged the ozone, the bracing salt smell of the sea 
down beyond Hamburg. Behind the carts, the 
junk, the weedy, net-littered stones of the opposite 
quay, squatted buildings that bore in their foreheads 
windows like great eyes peeping through the tiles 
under an arch of frowning brow. "Ox-eyes" the 
people call them. 

Every house was bright with flowers, and every 
woman carried at least one blossom in her market- 
basket. A maid in a short, gay petticoat was sing- 
ing a folk-song as she brushed her dooryard with a 
bundle of twigs. A genial crone went by bare- 
legged, harnessed with a dog to a cart full of fas- 
cinating earthenware, her silvery head-dress drawn 
tight over her silvery head — a sight to move a very 
sign-painter. In a stable door by the waterside sat 
a tiny maid, with flying curls, crooning a song to two 
baby goats in white and brown that were enthusias- 
tically eating oats out of her lap. "I am 'Lisbeth," 
she answered me, "and these" — patting her bearded 
friends — "are Fritz and Hans." 

With a sudden expansion of the heart I realized 
that I had entered the brighter atmosphere of a wine 
country, and that this was a foretaste of the dear, 
kindly South-German land. 

264 



MEISSEN 

Meissen is a town of crooked streets that wind about 
delightfully in its depths, and suddenly climb the 
heights on each hand — a town with a fresh surprise 
of architecture, of costume, or of landscape at every 
turn. One is constantly finding some landing 
whence ancient walled steps shoot up on the one 
hand to the Burg, and down on the other hand to the 
river. 

I climbed the "Ascent of Souls" beside an ivied 
wall weathered all colors. Where the corner of a 
house jutted out informally above the passers-by 
was an intimate view of the Town Church belfry, 
which had crowned the previous evening's pleasure. 
Past the Princes' School, where Gellert and Lessing 
once studied, the way led to the fourteenth-century 
Church of St. Afra, the Cyprian princess martyred 
at Augsburg by Diocletian in the year 303, whose 
soul flew to heaven a white dove, leaving her body 
unharmed by the flames. The chroniclers say that 
Dante taught in the cloister-school in 1307. 

Through a tower-gate and by the fine, Roman- 
esque portal of the Waschhof, I passed from the 
Afra Mountain over a medieval viaduct to the Castle 
Mountain, regions both formerly independent of 
Meissen law, and called "Freedom" to this day. 

Massive, august, the Albrechtsburg, with its out- 
buildings, spreads protecting arms about the thir- 

267 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

teenth-century cathedral, the richest and most beau- 
tiful of the churches of Saxony. There, in the 
Princes' Chapel, before the western facade, beneath 
the bronzes of Peter Vischer, lie the Saxon rulers of 
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, on whom look 
down primitive statues of the Magi and the crowd of 
Gothic saints and angels on the main portal. 

The church windows are of Putzenscheiberij the 
same small, round panes with a bubble of glass in the 
center which gave Rembrandt his iridescent gloom; 
but in the choir still glows stained glass of the four- 
teenth century. 

The pavement is covered with gravestones and 
brazen slabs. Here is the resting-place of Dr. Johann 
Hofmann, who, after quarreling with John Huss, 
seceded from Prague with a throng of German pro- 
fessors and students to found Leipsic University. 
Here is the grave of Dr. Gunther, who was killed by 
the same bolt that shattered the steeples in April, 
1547; and here, until the Reformation, was the tomb 
of Benno, the saint who, according to report, worked 
miracles while alive, and whose bones healed the sick 
more than four hundred years after his death. 

Before the high altar lies Margrave William the 
One-eyed under a slab showing where the bronze 
plate was torn away by the Swedes of Gustavus 
Adolphus. Legend says that this William oppressed 

268 



MEISSEN 

the clergy who prayed to the holy Benno. Benno 
warned William in a vision, much to the Margrave's 
amusement; but at his second appearance the saint 
burned out one of William's eyes with a torch. 
Whereupon the Margrave saw that it had been no 
dream, and made fourfold restitution. 

The cathedral is famous for the variety of its orna- 
mentation, and no two of its five hundred capitals 
bear the same foliage. Near the high altar is an ex- 
quisite Gothic tabernacle, and near by, over the 
sacristy door, are statues of Emperor Otto I, who 
built the original cathedral in 965, and of his smiling 
wife Adelheid, both masterpieces of thirteenth-cen- 
tury sculpture. 

The vaulting of the sacristy is carried, as in Auer- 
bach's Keller, by a single pillar. And there, through 
the small, rusty-barred, ivy-smothered windows of 
Putzenscheiben, I caught a glimpse, across the Elbe, 
of red crags and green meadows, and my friend the 
windmill still spinning eagerly on the sky-line. With 
a right good will my pfennigs dropped into a box 
marked "For the Heathen," poor people who could 
not see such things. 

A trap-door uncovered steps leading to a similar 
room underneath, from which more steps plunged to 
a still gloomier chamber in the bowels of the hill, both 
dating from Otto's tenth-century church. 

269 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

I was glad to come out again into the nave, where 
a young bird was flying about contentedly between 
the slender piers under the groined branches of the 
vaulting. It disappeared through a transept. I fol- 
lowed, and came out into a little cloister, the key-note 
of the whole cathedral concord. Massive, uncloister- 
like, ivy-draped piers inclosed with lovely pointed 
arches a square full of ferns and foliage, a fitting 
place to ruminate the day's experience and to enjoy 
the steeple above the choir. 

The Albrechtsburg, one of the finest of fifteenth- 
century castles, is the successor of a stronghold built 
in 928 by Henry I in the long German struggle 
against the Slavic inhabitants of the mark of Meis- 
sen. It was begun in 1471 by the noted architect 
Arnold of Westphalia, and until the court was trans- 
ferred to Dresden was the residence of the Saxon 
princes. After that it long lay neglected ; then for a 
century and a half it suffered the indignity of serv- 
ing as the royal porcelain factory. In 1881 it was 
restored and over-decorated, so that the exterior is 
more noteworthy than the long line of nobly vaulted 
and gaily frescoed halls which strangers visit. The 
glory of the Burg is its stair-tower, with wide Gothic 
arches framing the spiral stair inside. It is covered 
with convivial reliefs, taken, according to the guide, 
"from the profane life." They are of the same 

270 




ASCENT TO THE ALBRECHTSBURG 



MEISSEN 

period as those on the famous Rathaus in Breslau, 
and almost as grossly humorous. 

I like to think that from this fair Castle Moun- 
tain Christianity and culture spread in waves through 
central Germany, and that it was the base for the 
great military expeditions by which the hero Al- 
brecht helped to lay for Saxony the foundations of 
national unity. 

The porcelain factory in the Triebisch-Thal, in- 
teresting as it is, has quite unjustly monopolized the 
fame of Meissen. And a glimpse of the Burg from 
the riverside, a ramble up the Ascent of Souls, or a 
moment in the cloister of the cathedral, is far to be 
preferred to a whole Triebisch-Thal full of Meissen 
services and rococo figurines. 



273 




IX 

DRESDEN-THE FLORENCE 
OF THE ELBE 

,N Dresden I began to realize that the 
charm of Leipsic lay in the quaint atmos- 
phere of its old buildings, among which 
even trade had grown romantic, in the airi- 
ness of the many squares, in a village-like 
flavor of homely intimacy caught amid the modern 
prose of a commercial city. Meissen had been some- 
thing beyond experience, a dream of strange beauty. 
But in Dresden I found a beauty very real and tan- 
gible, directly arousing, without complicated equip- 
ments of antiquity, the instant response of the plea- 
sure-loving human heart, like a voluptuous melody 
on the cello. 

My eighteenth-century lodgings in Jews' Court 
gave upon the New Market, where petty trades- 
people from every part of central Germany were 
preparing for one of Dresden's characteristic Jahr- 
markte, or fairs, which take place three times in the 

274 



DRESDEN 

year. Every one was building himself a rude wooden 
booth, as for some Christian Feast of Tabernacles, 
while the porcelain merchants about the Church of 
Our Lady were unpacking acres of coarse pottery 
and Meissen figurines. 

A lane of Dresden's fast-vanishing old houses led 
toward the river, and I turned on the steps of the 
Bruhl Terrace to see how exquisitely the roofs 
curved upward toward where the somber mass of the 
Church of Our Lady, a church modeled after the 
Roman St. Peter's, dominated the city, the porce- 
lain market surging white as foam about its crag-like 
base. 

From the half -night of that lane I emerged upon 
a memorable scene. Far and wide, beneath, the 
Elbe poured between its bridges. Some boats had 
just landed thousands of young children, who, re- 
turning radiant from their holiday in Saxon Switzer- 
land, swarmed in a riot of color about the candy wo- 
men on the waterside below, each with a yellow ticket 
strung about his or her neck. 

A segment of delicate pink sun drifted low beside 
the opera-house, sending through the hoary arches 
of the Augustus Bridge a fainter film of rose to rest 
on the river surface. Haze-colored smoke floated 
from steamers made fast to the shore, bedimming 
the Museum's flat dome, the tower of the Court 

275 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

Church, and the piquant spire of the castle, toning 
its vivid patina down to the faint fawn color of the 
eastward waters, and mercifully veiling the Landes- 
rat end the opera-house, the hronze tigers of which 
frisked before a mass of masonry impressive in the 
dusk. With the waning of day, the ripples before 
the old bridge turned imperceptibly to liquid bronze, 
as light as the western heavens, lighter for the dark 
masses of stone behind; while to the eastward, sky 
and water, both a deepening fawn, brought out the 
gay colors of the river traffic and the rainbow of 
costumes along the shore. 

Following an old custom, I dined at the Belve- 
dere, where an orchestra that might be the pride of 
any city was playing Wagner to an audience whose 
very forks were dumb during the music. The acous- 
tics were perfect ; the hall was a gem in simple white 
and gold, and I shall not forget the pleasure of look- 
ing over those happy, cultivated faces to where, 
through the colonnade, the evening haze was deepen- 
ing to an intense blue upon the river and the distant 
heights of Loschwitz. 

The moon was up over the Academy of Art as I 
left, and the benches under the trees of the terrace 
outside were filled with people raptly enjoying, with 
the faint music, the splashes of watery light reflected 
from the lamps of the other shore, the murmur of 

276 




CHURCH OF OUR LADY FROM THE BRUHL TERRACE 



DRESDEN 

the running river, and the soft silhouette of Dres- 
den's noble bridges and towers. 

Watchmen were prowling about the porcelain 
acres by the Church of Our Lady, and it seemed as if 
heaven had rained upon that favored spot a double 
portion of straw and sacking. The very booths of 
the market-place, drenched in moonlight, were 
touched with mystery and a kind of grotesque 
beauty. 

Dresden is essentially a city of pleasure— of fair, 
wide prospects, of hearty river life, of zest in nature 
and art. Even the public buildings cluster about the 
Elbe, much as the huts of the first settlers clustered. 

A circle of Wendish herdsmen's huts on the right 
bank, a line of fisher-shanties on the left — these were 
the unlikely beginnings of Dresden in the sixth cen- 
tury. But the settlement lay at the only point in 
the river valley where a ford was practicable, tempt- 
ing the Germans to settle on the left bank between 
the Wends and the swamps, ovSeen, unlovely places 
that have long since disappeared, leaving behind 
only the names See-Strasse, Am See, and Seevor- 
stadt. Indeed, the very name of Dresden is derived 
from the Slavic dresjan, which means "dwellers in 
the swamp-forest." 

We know that the Church of Our Lady was built 

279 



^« »^ ' - ~ -* — — ■ -*- — - - - - - - - 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

in the eleventh century, that until the twelfth the 
right and left banks of the stream were called re- 
spectively "heathen" and "Christian," that Dresden 
was first mentioned as a city in 1216, and that the 
original bridge was built in 1222. The market-place 
in the New Town across the river still bears traces of 
its original Wendish form, the Bundling, or circle of 
huts facing an inner space with only one exit, a 
primitive device for guarding the cattle of the com- 
munity at night. 

It was prophetic of Dresden's artistic destiny that 
the first Margrave of Meissen to reside here (1277- 
88) should have been Heinrich der Erlauchte, who 
was mentioned as a fellow- Minnesinger by Tann- 
hauser and by Walther von der Vogelweide. Hein- 
rich married an Austrian princess, who brought to 
Dresden a piece of the true cross. For this a chapel 
was added to the Church of St. Nicholas, where it 
was exhibited, together with another cross that came 
swimming miraculously down the Elbe; and these 
drew such a throng of liberal pilgrims that St. Nich- 
olas's was rebuilt as the Church of the Cross and the 
old wooden bridge turned into one of stone in 1319. 
It is curious to know that this church and the Augus- 
tus Bridge are still under one financial management. 

During four troubled centuries unwarlike Dresden 
suffered much, and did not become important until 

280 




PORCELAIN 1-AIR IN THE NEW MARKET, THE CHURCH OE OUR LADY ON THE LEET 



■ ' p ' - 



P JJT' 



-■ 



DRESDEN 

the reign of Frederick Augustus the Strong (1694- 
1733)— "August the Physically Strong," as Carlyle 
loved to call him. 

A gilt, rococo king, clad discrepantly in a wig and 
toga, he strides a gilt horse in the New Town mar- 
ket-place, a weak variant of Berlin's monument to 
the Great Elector, facing, with a faint grin, his king- 
dom of Poland, for which he turned Roman Catho- 
lic. Resembling Louis XIV in feature, he strove to 
resemble him as well in trying to revive the golden 
period of Roman culture and to combine, in the 
Zwinger, all the elegant and useful features of Ro- 
man baths and palaces. 

The Zwinger was intended to unite immense ban- 
quet- and dancing-halls with baths, grottoes, colon- 
nades, pleasure-walks, rows of trees and pillars, 
lawns, gardens, waterfalls, and playgrounds — a fit 
place to display the pomp and circumstance of royal 
domestic life in the ostentatious spirit of the eigh- 
teenth century. It was planned to carry the Zwin- 
ger down to the river and finish it with an unex- 
ampled palace; but Poppelmann, the architect, was 
able merely to build the forecourt before the royal 
whim veered. 

This fragment, however, with its seven pavilions 
and connecting galleries, is unique among buildings 
— "the most vivacious and fanciful stone-creation of 

18 283 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

Germany," as Wildburg declares. "The swift evo- 
lution of late baroque," he continues, "into the most 
joyous and airy rococo, the wondrous fusing of an 
almost Indian imagination with German solidity and 
Gallic coquetry, make a gloriously artistic whole." 

The first impression made by the Zwinger on a 
student of history is that "August the Physically 
Strong" must have had in mind the housing of his 
famous three hundred and fifty-four children, and 
he cannot help wondering whether the chubby stone 
infants that cluster on each pavilion can be family 
portraits. The various deities scattered among these 
riotous princes seem frankly amused at their situ- 
ation. Here is a sincerer sportiveness, a less manu- 
factured gaiety, than I remember in any other 
rococo. This joyful and frivolous ornamentation 
was destined to become the classical example of its 
school, and until to-day to mold the style of the 
Meissen porcelain, invented in Dresden by Bottger 
in 1709. 

The Museum, built by Gottfried Semper in the 
style of the Italian Renaissance, connects the ends of 
the Zwinger. It contains the finest gallery of paint- 
ings in Germany, a collection ranking with those of 
the Louvre, the Pitti, and the Uffizi. It was made 
in great part by August the Strong and his son 
August II, who had shrewd agents in the Nether- 

284 



DRESDEN 

lands, France, and Italy. Even the Pope and the 
King of Sicily did their utmost to rob Italy of its 
treasures for them. 

Their most fortunate find was the Sistine Ma- 
donna, bought in 1753 from the monks of Piacenza 
for twenty thousand ducats and a plausible copy. 
To smuggle the picture safely across the frontier, 
the conspirators painted it over with a wretched 
landscape. When the treasure arrived, the eager 
king had it hung in the throne-room ; and seeing that 
the best light fell on the dais, he shoved the throne 
aside with his own hands, exclaiming, "Room for the 
great Raphael!" 

Nothing could more vividly bring out the contrast 
between esthetic Dresden and militant Berlin. And 
this contrast was emphasized three years later when 
Frederick the Great seized Dresden, ransacked the 
royal archives, and sent poor August II in a panic 
to the Konigstein, leaving his queen behind to face 
the Prussians. 

This war ended the gallery's rapid growth, but it 
had already become the most noteworthy collection 
north of the Alps. As early as 1756, Winckelmann, 
whose genius had been awakened by this gallery, 
called Dresden "the German Athens," a name that 
never gained the popularity of Herder's epithet, 
"the Florence of the Elbe." 

285 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

On entering the gallery, one's first thought is for 
the great Raphael. There is a hypnotic expression 
in the Madonna's wide eyes, which the infinite prom- 
ises of that childhood have struck into trance, mir- 
roring all the possibilities of motherhood. This in- 
tensity of vision is only accentuated by the formalism 
of Santa Barbara and Pope Sixtus. With Raphael's 
ordinary work in my mind, I was heartily surprised, 
years ago, by a first view of the Sistine Madonna. 
It was much as if, in a vision, I had heard one of 
a row of simpering Perugino saints burst forth into 
a Brahms song. 

It is a commentary on the contrast between the 
characters of northern and middle Germany that 
the Dresden Gallery is poor in the early paintings of 
historical interest, and rich in the golden periods — 
an exact antithesis to Berlin. 

Here Correggio, with his tenderness and his deep 
backgrounds, is even more fully represented than at 
Parma. Here Paolo Veronese may be known best 
— the gay Paolo in all his superficial glory, with his 
joy in luscious brocades set off against the gleaming 
of Palladian architecture. 

The canvases of Giorgione are always suffused 
with poetry and a dreamy music, but here the hour 
is immortalized when Aphrodite slept while Giorgi- 
one painted. Myriad-minded Titian is almost at his 

286 



- '- * **J>JUL*M*j m jiMjmLii.^i-^_ 



DRESDEN 

height in "The Tribute Money" and "The Marriage 
of St. Catherine." Before the exquisite, miniature 
altarpiece of Jan van Eyck one forgets its size, as 
one forgets the blindness of some great musician 
when he is playing his best. And here hangs one of 
the chief canvases of Van der Meer, that rare realist 
who has but lately come into his own, 

Rubens is most characteristic in the mad "Boar 
Hunt" and the swirling and plunging of the "Quos 
Ego." 

There is a humor unusual with Rembrandt in 
"Samson's Riddle"; and three of the master's most 
subtle character studies are "The Gold-weigher," the 
portrait of an old man, and that of his wife Saskia. 
His school is even better represented here than in 
Amsterdam or The Hague. 

It is natural that the German painters should be 
weaker in Dresden than the Italian and Flemish and 
Dutch; for the artistic charity of the founder of the 
Zwinger and the Court Church did not begin at 
home. Nevertheless, there are a few native master- 
pieces. The well-known Meyer Madonna of Hol- 
bein was held for centuries as the original until 
chance discovered the present Darmstadt picture in 
the junk- wagon of a Parisian peddler. His por- 
trait of the Sieur de Morette was long thought to be 
a Leonardo, and that of Sir Thomas Godsalve with 

287 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

his son is one of the most notable portraits of his 
English period. 

Though the modern gallery is small, it is ex- 
tremely select, as befits the vicinity. It contains such 
well-known paintings as Menzel's riotous "Market- 
place in Verona," Hofmann's "Christ in the Tem- 
ple," and the appealing "Holy Night" by Von 
Uhde. 

An old traveler once declared that he preferred to 
investigate mountains from the foot, inns from the 
inside, and palaces from the outside. The wanderer 
in Germany soon learns this method, particularly 
with palaces; but a visit to the Dresden castle is a 
mildly amusing exception to the usual rule. 

Its exterior is not forbidding, like the ordinary 
German palace, being enlivened with red tiles, yellow 
plaster, and a graceful green steeple; with Renais- 
sance gables and, in the court, with round stair-towers 
which recall the fact that Arnold of Westphalia re- 
built it at the time when he was creating the 
Albrechtsburg at Meissen. 

The bedchamber of August the Strong is large, 
and his throne-room, adjoining, is hung with pic- 
tures of Leda and Aphrodite. The rooms are not so 
overladen with ornament as to be unfriendly, and 
one can imagine people actually taking their plea- 
sure in the festal hall. Pictures are there, to be sure, 

288 



DRESDEN 

of the inevitable Kaisers, but they look almost docile, 
and are neutralized by such homely frescos as "Ring 
Around a Rosy" and "Washing the Baby," an 
operation not unknown to those palace walls. 

The Green Vault is a place that contains earth's 
greatest display of knickknacks, royal playthings, 
and jewels. There are exhibited an ivory frigate in 
full sail, Siamese Twins in ivory, and one hundred 
and forty-two fallen angels carved out of a single 
tusk. In a place of honor is a dish with an elaborate 
representation of the "Scarlet Woman." There are 
goblets made of ostrich eggs, a silver beaker from 
Nuremberg in the form of a young lady, and the 
Bible of Gustavus Adolphus. One may see vessels 
and trinkets made of every stone mentioned in the 
Book of Revelation. A "perpetual-motion" clock 
represents the Tower of Babel, whereon perch eight 
town pipers blowing four pipes, three trombones, 
and a waldhorn. Then there are wonderful Limoges 
enamels, the masterpieces of the old German gold- 
smiths, and, as a climax, the Saxon crown jewels. 

After so much touristry it was natural to loll on 
the waterside in the quaint "Italian Village," a row 
of houses once inhabited by the Italian workmen 
who built the Court Church, now a restaurant and 
rendezvous for all genial Dresdeners. There it was 
pleasant to rest over a stein, and watch the river 

291 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

seething by between the magnificent piers of the 
Augustus Bridge; to enjoy through half -shut eyes 
the ox-eyed roofs of the New Town behind their 
well-wooded gardens, and the concave towers of the 
Japanese House, which shelters the royal library. 
Pleasant also to watch the divers opposite (for half 
of Dresden lives in the water during the hot months) , 
and the party-colored stream of life above, pouring 
back and forth over the swift stream. 

Alas! they had already begun to tear down the 
venerable Augustus Bridge, the symbol of Dresden 
and its finest monument! The small, picturesque 
arches, dangerous to the growing river traffic, were 
doomed to yield to wider ones, which, as the author- 
ities promise, are to be quite as picturesque. But the 
artists wonder how many centuries it will take to win 
back the patina of those piers. 

After the sharpness of Berlin and the flatness of 
Leipsic, Dresden's humor is refreshing. It strikes 
a nice balance between satirical Berlin and soft- 
hearted, gemutlich Munich. 

There is nothing brutally downright about it: it 
proceeds by indirection. If the Dresdener wishes 
to condemn the suburb of Striessen, for instance, he 
declares that the very sparrows take in their legs 
when flying over it. The pleasantry of the lower 
classes is of the mildest. 

292 



DRESDEN 

"In which street is the goose cooked only on one 
side?" 

"Don't know." 

"In the little Plaunscher-Gasse, for on the other 
side there are no houses." 

In the plain old Rathaus there used to be a motto 
which is still characteristic of this town of friendli- 
ness: "One man's speech," runs the motto, "is a 
good half-speech. Hear the other man's speech, 
too." The Dresdener does not interrupt. He is not 
puffed up, nor does he imagine a vain thing. He is 
almost as polite as the Parisian, with much of the 
Parisian polish and savoir-faire. He is never 
brusque. A Berliner would call an idler "lazy," a 
Miinchener would call him "idealistic," but a real 
Dresdener would intimate that he is "not quite in- 
dustrious." Instead of "You 're a boor," he says, 
"The honored sir appears hardly to realize that he is 
not conducting himself properly." The inquiring 
stranger will find him an entertaining companion 
who will gladly see him to the suburbs and even ar- 
range for him, with many apologies, any neglected 
item of dress. 

The Dresdener is orderly, modest, and quiet even 
in his pleasures. The very policeman is not so im- 
pressed with his position as the ordinary Prussian 
lackey. The Dresdener is so gentle that his very cats 

293 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

look altruistic, and his sparrows will hop across your 
feet in any beer-garden. He is so amiable that I have 
often been tempted to withhold a tip, to see if I could 
draw as much as a sigh from that paragon of Chris- 
tian virtues, the waiter. 

But, despite these qualities, he does not lack criti- 
cal sense, defining, for instance, the Secession school 
of painting as "art which, if you would be cultivated, 
you must like at all events — whether you like it or 
not." 

Because Dresden has the advantages of a large 
city with but few of its drawbacks, it is so popular 
with Anglo-Saxons as to have an English and an 
American quarter. It is rich in painting, sculpture, 
music, and architecture; has fine theaters and inter- 
esting personalities; is charmingly situated and 
within a short ride of Saxon Switzerland, the most 
attractive miniature mountain range in Germany: 
and yet the individual still counts among its half- 
million people — counts even to the verge of town 
gossip. Despite the size of the city, neighborliness 
and sociability flourish like the roses of the Zwinger ; 
and any novelty like a horse-race or an Englishman 
in knickerbockers lays hold of the united civic imag- 
ination. 

Dresden combines the advantages of the metropo- 
lis with the humanity of the village, and one can 

294 



DRESDEN 

easily forgive it for outdoing Leipsic in credulity, 
servility, and greed for titles, and for falling behind 
its neighbor in business methods. 

The best place to meet the Dresdener is on the 
Bruhl Terrace, "the balcony of Europe," as it was 
once christened by an enthusiast. Its daisy-covered 
walls were a part of the fortifications before Bruhl, 
the all-powerful minister of August II, in 1736, 
made them over into his private gardens. 

It was thrown open to the public in 1814. From 
the waterside, passages may still be seen leading to 
the ancient dungeons, now used for the imprison- 
ment of beer. On the corner, under the Belvedere, 
is a crude relief of the Elector Moritz being forced 
by a skeleton— a "bone-man," as the Germans say — 
to hand over the electoral sword to his brother 
August. 

This very sword is now in the Johanneum, an old 
building in which the historical museum and the 
royal collection of porcelain lodge informally above 
the royal stables. The portal of the courtyard is the 
most representative piece of Renaissance sculpture 
in Dresden, a fusion of German and Italian motifs 
setting off a relief of the Resurrection. 

In the center of the court is the tank where the 
royal horses were washed, and an inclined horse-path 
leads to the second story along an ivy-matted wall 

297 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

above which appear the picturesque gables and spire 
of the castle and the tower of the Court Church. 

The historical museum is mainly devoted to the 
history of war. No other collection has given me 
such a vision of the glamour and romance of chivalry 
or the beauty of medieval weapons and armor. Here 
plumed knights joust as our childhood saw them in 
"Ivanhoe." Here one feels the poetry of battle as 
vividly as, in the arsenal at Berlin, one feels its scien- 
tific, realistic side. This is the Scott, that the Tol- 
stoi, of war. 

The royal porcelain collection is the largest and 
richest of its kind in Europe. Through the austeri- 
ties of the early Chinese work one gradually ap- 
proaches the melting harmonies of Japanese color, 
then drops back centuries to the first red German 
ware of Bottger, and on through the early whites of 
Meissen, and its colored imitations of the Asiatic, to 
the rococo of the Zwinger and the recent Meissen 
ware which imitates the royal Copenhagen. Faience 
and Italian majolica round a collection of which the 
most significant part is the group of giant vases in 
cobalt blue given to August the Strong in 1717 by 
old Frederick William of Prussia in exchange for a 
regiment of tall dragoons. 

The Albertinum cannot compare in its ancient 
sculpture with the Glyptothek of Munich or even 

298 



DRESDEN 

with Berlin's Old Museum; but the modern sculp- 
ture gallery is important and contains a collection of 
medallions even more exquisitely chosen than the 
larger collection in Hamburg. 

I shall not forget my parting from Dresden. One 
of the gay steamers that ply up-stream dropped me 
to climb the heights of. Loschwitz for a last glimpse 
of the German Florence from this northern Fiesole. 
There it lay, checkered with patches of sunlight and 
looking almost mysterious through a delicate mist — 
that duomo, the Church of Our Lady, herding its 
flock of comely towers, a solid Protestant antithesis 
to the baroque brilliance of the Catholic Court 
Church. 

There lay the city of pleasure in all its beauty, 
interlaced with silvery streaks of pond and river. 
And toward it, sweeping parallel to the mighty arc 
of the Elbe, ran a broader river of smooth green 
meadow-land fronting the villas of the opposite 
shore. 

Backward the peaks of Saxon Switzerland were 
beckoning, but it was with an unaccustomed regret 
that I turned my face from art to nature. 



299 




X 

MUNICH-A CITY OF GOOD NATURE 

AM going to make Munich such an honor 
£ to Germany," declared Ludwig I, "that 

nobody will know Germany who has not 

seen Munich." 

This prophecy has not only been ful- 
filled, but fulfilled in such a natural, spontaneous 
way that the city is a running commentary on the 
character of its citizens. The capital of northern 
Germany is less an expression of its people than an 
embodiment of the character of its ruling family; 
but the Southern capital is an open book wherein 
even the stranger may read the popular love of 
beauty and of bohemian ways; the untranslatable 
Gemiltlichkeit; the dislike of trade; the piety; the 
simple, reposeful breadth ; the loyalty to superstition 
and romance ; and the score of other qualities that go 
to make up the true Miinchener. 

Munich is, in great part, a creation of the nine- 
teenth century. Yet when one sees how cleverly and 

300 



MUNICH-A CITY OF GOOD NATURE 

how lovingly she has woven the new about whatever 
remains of the old, it is easy to understand why she 
has been Germany's artistic leader for the last hun- 
dred years, and why such men of genius as Lenbach, 
Von Uhde, Schwanthaler, Orlando di Lasso, and 
Richard Strauss have felt at home there. 

My first impression of Munich was of a place sim- 
ply irradiated with the love of beauty. The principal 
streets, old and new, seemed as exquisitely calculated 
for effects of vista as the streets of Danzig; the 
squares, with their old tower-gates and churches and 
massed houses, were grouped as if composed by the 
eye of a painter. And although one half of the 
Marien-Platz is the work of our day, yet few squares 
in Europe have given me a deeper sense of the com- 
bined opulence and simplicity, the dignity and pure 
beauty, that used to invest the forums of medieval 
towns like Siena and Nuremberg. 

In the Pinakothek I found a gallery of old paint- 
ings second to no other in the land but that of Dres- 
den, and quite as strong in the Germanic schools as 
Dresden is in the Italian. Here one has an illumi- 
nating oversight of early Rhenish and Netherlandish 
art, and how it led, on the one hand, to such master- 
pieces as the elder Holbein's "St. Sebastian" and 
Diirer's "Four Temperaments"; and, on the other 
hand, to canvases like Hals's inimitable little por- 

301 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

trait of Willem Croes, Rembrandt's "Descent from 
the Cross," and the huge collection of Rubens, that 
Dionysus among painters. This gallery also sur- 
passes Dresden's in the works of Murillo and of 
Titian, whose "Christ Crowned with Thorns" is one 
of his richest canvases, both in its sensuous and its 
spiritual appeal. Indeed, Fritz von Uhde said once 
to me that, in his opinion, this was the greatest pic- 
ture ever painted. The building itself has served 
for generations as a type of the ideal home for pic- 
tures. The New Pinakothek, a companion struc- 
ture, holds a representative assemblage of modern 
German paintings, while the Schack Gallery has an 
unequaled collection of Bocklin and of Schwind, that 
Grimm of the easel who fixed on canvas the very 
essence of medieval romance and fairy-lore. In the 
fascinating new National Museum I found a vivid 
resume of the complete artistic history of the Ba- 
varians, a collection unrivaled in its setting, and 
rivaled alone in its content by the Germanic Museum 
at Nuremberg. It was typical of the place that a 
whole floor should be given over to those tender, 
miniature representations of the Nativity which the 
Germans call Krippen. The Glyptothek holds an 
assemblage of masterpieces of Greek sculpture the 
equal of which cannot be found short of Rome or 
Paris. This is the home of the Barberini Faun, the 

302 




KARL'S PLACE, LOOKING TOWARD KARL'S GATE, AND THE CHURCH OF OUR LADY 



MUNICH-A CITY OF GOOD NATURE 

Rondanini Medusa, and the famous pediment 
groups from iEgina. 

But despite all these signs of a rare artistic cul- 
ture, it is plain that the Munchener has one passion 
passing his devotion to painting, sculpture, and 
architecture: he is at heart a child of the open air, 
and might sincerely say with Landor, 

Nature I lov'd, and next to Nature, Art. ° 

Through and through he is a devotee of those en- 
chanted mountains the snow-capped summits of 
which lend the finishing touch to a distant view of 
his city ; and toward whose forests and gem-like lakes 
he instinctively turns with Rucksack and staff when- 
ever his work is done. In those leagues of grove 
and stream called the English Garden ; in the bloom- 
ing wood- ways along the riverside ; and in the flashes 
of turf and blossom and foliage that punctuate his 
city the Munchener seems forever proclaiming, 

My heart 's in the highlands. 

And indeed the city's bracing, eager mountain air 
— blowing two thousand feet above the sea — is 
largely accountable for the heaven-sent Munich tem- 
perament. This climate makes optimists as readily 
as that of Berlin makes pessimists. 

There are hereditary reasons for the Muncheners' 

14 305 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

love of nature. For until recently a majority of the 
population had peasant blood in their veins. The 
North Germans are constantly reproaching them for 
their origin; but to a foreigner this strain of rustic 
naturalness and simplicity, found in the third largest 
city in the land, is one of its chief charms. 

The Miinchener does not go about trying to look 
impressive like so many other Germans, but is as 
natural as a lumberman or farmer. The city is so 
unconventional that a stranger must be very dull or 
very tongue-tied who feels lonely there. Any one 
may talk to almost any one, and a mixed crowd at 
a restaurant table is soon chatting with the ease 
of a group of old friends. 

Few other places are so democratic. In the great 
beer-halls where Munich spends many of its leisure 
moments, one man is exactly as good as another. 
There you will find a mayor and an army captain 
rubbing shoulders with a sweep and a peddler, and 
all talking and laughing together with no sense of 
constraint. I like to recall a fragment of democracy 
that I met with on the platform of a trolley-car. 
There were five of us, repesenting almost as many 
grades of society. To us entered the conductor, 
saluted, and reached into his pocket. I supposed 
he was feeling for his bundle of transfers. Instead, 
he pulled forth a tortoise-shell snuff-box and handed 

306 



MUNICH-A CITY OF GOOD NATURE 

it round. My fellow-passengers took their pinches 
with much good feeling. Then the conductor fixed us 
each in turn with the kindliest eyes in the world, and 
dusted his ruddy nose with a bandana equally ruddy. 

Another incident was quite as characteristic. We 
were audibly admiring a picture of Carmen Sylva in 
a window. An old public porter, lounging near by, 
pricked up his ears. "What," he cried, "she beauti- 
ful? You just ought to see my Gretchen!" And 
he launched into an enthusiastic description of his 
wife and her charms of face, figure, mind, and heart. 

Such whole-souled democracy would be impossible 
without the famous Gemutlichkeit of Munich. It 
is a misfortune that the English has no equivalent 
for this useful and eloquent word. Perhaps the lack 
is also significant. It means a sort of chronic good- 
will-toward-men attitude, tinged with democracy 
and bubbling humor, with mountain air, and a large 
sympathy for the other fellow's point of view. Even 
Martin Luther called these people "friendly and 
good-hearted," and declared that if he might travel, 
he would rather wander through Swabia and Ba- 
varia than anywhere else. And this, although these 
stanch Catholics hated the Reformer like the pest, 
and to this day still libel him by telling how he 
stopped at a tavern in the Sendlinger-Strasse and 
ran away without paying for his sausage. 

307 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

The Miincheners are quite Austrian in the hearti- 
ness of their salutations. "Griiss di Gott!" ("God 
greet thee!") friends exclaim on meeting; and 
"B'hut di Gott!" ("God keep thee!") at parting. 
When a crowd, in breaking up, coos a general 
Adjej it is as though they had broken forth into 
a chorus of gentle song. "One almost has to say 
good-by to the trees here," a Chicago girl once 
declared. 

The Miincheners are so good-natured that they 
hate to trouble one for their, just dues. I have had 
more than one landlady who could hardly be induced 
to present her bill, and even then half the extras were 
not included. On a certain street-car line I was 
never approached for fare during four consecutive 
rides. And yet — strange paradox — Munich, is the 
gateway of greedy Italy, and its people have many 
marked Italian characteristics. 

They have in their Gemiltlichkeit a humorous 
streak capable of saving almost any situation. 
"Dawn breaks after the blackness of night," ex- 
claimed the servant, with an engaging smile, as she 
brought in my omelet forty minutes late. 

Thus equipped, they can extract pleasure from 
anything— even from the new annex to the imposing 
court of justice. This annex is gaudy with enam- 
eled tiles, and makes a violent discord with the older, 

308 



MUNICH-A CITY OF GOOD NATURE 

baroque building. A story is current of a con- 
demned murderer who was allowed a last wish. 

"Kindly lead me past the new court of justice," 
he answered, "that I may have one more good laugh 
before I die." 

Twice a year all the exuberant, bohemian quali- 
ties of the people find full outlet. The October Fes- 
tival is held on the Theresien Wiese, near Schwan- 
thaler's colossal statue of Bavaria, and, on a large 
scale, is a cross between an American circus and a 
French fete. The Karneval is the most festive sea- 
son in the calendar. Twice a week from Twelfth 
Night to Ash Wednesday there are masked balls in 
which nearly every one joins. During Karneval, all 
necessity for introductions in a public place is set 
aside, and no man may insist on monopolizing his 
partner. The last three days are called Fasching, 
and then the fun grows fast and furious. General 
license reigns indoors and out. For seventy-two 
hours there is little thought of sleep. The streets 
are alive with masks and costumes, with confetti and 
paper serpents. Any masked lady may be kissed 
with impunity, and few are unmasked. It is a scene 
even more hilarious and brilliant than that other 
carnevale which seethes up and down the Roman 
Corso. And this festival seems to come more 
directly "out of the abundance of the heart" than 

309 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

the Italian one. There it has a marked theatrical 
quality. Here it is a sincere, hearty, intimate ex- 
pression of the brotherhood of man, the sisterhood of 
woman. 

This intimate quality, found even amid the mad- 
ness of Karnevalj is one of the things that endear the 
city most to those who know it. In absence one 
yearns for certain Munich sights as for the sight of 
tried and trusted friends. 

The Old Rathaus, for instance, has a specially 
intimate appeal, with its noble tower-gate and its 
simple, beautiful hall enlivened by the Gothic humor 
of Grasser's dancing figures. One has much the 
same feeling for the great, homely tower of St. 
Peter's ("The Old Peter," in the vernacular), 
whence on Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings 
a trombone quartet breathes mellow chorales ; for the 
little Church of St. John, built next their own fanci- 
ful house, and presented to Munich by those re- 
nowned artists, the Asam brothers, who poured out 
on its walls so much native buoyancy and humor; 
for the toy houses of the village-like Au, clustering 
along their brook ; for the dear old St. Jacobs-Platz ; 
and perhaps most of all for the gigantic body and 
thick, dusty-red towers of the Church of Our 
Lady, like a portly, genial, confiding burgher, 
ready to welcome you into his heart on the slightest 
provocation. 

310 




CHURCH OF ST. JOHN 



MUNICH-A CITY OF GOOD NATURE 

Artists, as a rule, detest commerce, and these ar- 
tistic people have had to make trade as attractive 
as possible for themselves. Hence they have chosen 
to deal in the two things they like best, art and beer. 

Munich is not only the center of the arts and crafts 
movement, of the photographic, lithographic, and 
allied industries, but also, owing to its honesty and 
its situation in the center of Europe, it is the best 
place to buy "antiquities." There is even one com- 
mercial institution which the Muncheners actually 
contrive to invest with their carnival spirit. The 
Dult is a biennial rag-fair, covering many acres 
near the toy houses of the Au. Here, amid the 
booths that hold the Bavarian junk harvest of the 
last six months, the eye of the enthusiast may dis- 
cover Egyptian and Roman bronzes, fine old laces 
and embroidered vestments, Sicilian terra-cottas, 
Renaissance furniture and ironwork, Russian brasses, 
even precious prints and paintings, enamels and 
jewels, going for a mere song. The knowing dis- 
guise themselves in rags in order to buy cheaper. All 
one's friends are there, and when any one makes a 
lucky find, all the rest join his impromptu carnival 
of triumph at the Citizens' Brewery hard by. 

Munich brews more and better beer than any other 
city. It is hard to realize what an integral part of 
the place and its people this liquid is, and what a 
deep sentiment they have for it. I once overheard 

313 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

a short dialogue entirely characteristic of the local 
point of view: 

Waitress: "Yet another beer?" 

Citizen: "What a question I" 

"The Bavarian can put up with anything," runs 
a well-known proverb, "even with the fires of purga- 
tory, if only he can have his beer." It flows in his 
veins; and one is sometimes tempted to call what 
flows beneath the beautiful bridges "the Isarbrau." 

The saying goes that those landmarks, the twin 
towers of the Church of Our Lady, are capped by 
two great beer-mugs. And the city's symbol is the 
far-famed Miinchener Kindl— a boy in a monk's 
habit and often with a stein in his hand. Legend ex- 
plains the figure by telling how our Saviour once 
came down, disguised as a little child, to bless the 
place and further the good works of the monks, who 
were the original local brewers. In this connection 
it is interesting to know that Cloister Schaf tlarn, the 
germ of Munich, still turns out an excellent brew. 

For many centuries the quality of Munich beer 
Has been jealously guarded by law. There is an 
amusing rhymed legend about the methods of in- 
spection. Three chosen councilors went to the 
brewery, but instead of pouring the beer down their 
throats, they poured it upon a bench, sat down to- 
gether, then rose, an'd started for the door. If the 

314 



MUNICH-A CITY OF GOOD NATURE 

bench accompanied them all the way, then the beer 
was strong and good. "But in these degenerate 
days," wails the chronicler, "far from having the 
bench stick to them, they stick, instead, to the bench !" 

A marked trait of this hearty people is their devo- 
tion to the ancient line of Wittelsbach. In tem- 
perament many of the dukes and kings of Bavaria 
have shown themselves true Miincheners, specially 
in their love of beauty; and while, in many cases, 
their architectural taste has not fully expressed the 
character of the people, yet, from the first ducal 
castle down to the National Museum and the new 
bridges, the Wittelsbachs have filled the centuries 
with architecture which is, on the whole, racy of the 
soil, though many of the buildings are in the styles 
of distant ages and nations. 

These Wittelsbachs have been closer to their peo- 
ple than most ruling houses, and some of them have 
been loved in return as kindred spirits. It is touch- 
ing to remember how they would call out to Max 
Joseph as he rode past in troublous times: "Weil du 
nur da bist, Maxl, ist alles gut." ("Seeing you 're 
here, Maxy, everything 's all right.") On the abdi- 
cation of their Maecenas, Ludwig I, they brought the 
old man to tears with their wild demonstrations of 
affection; and aged citizens have told me that heart- 
breaking scenes were witnessed when it became 

315 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

known that mad Ludwig II had taken his own 
life. 

The earlier Wittelsbach architecture is more in 
harmony with Munich character than is the later. 
There is the romantic "Old Court," on the site of the 
first ducal castle, with its Gothic portals and facades, 
its picturesque, dunce-capped oriel window, and the 
quaint fountain murmuring in the center. 

Near by, from a lane behind the post-office, one 
comes suddenly upon the old Tourney Court, now 
called the Court of the Mint. It is a typical work 
of the German Renaissance. The oblong space is 
surrounded by three tiers of colonnades, and the 
squat, dusky-red pillars and flattened arches breathe 
the ponderous Gemiltlichkeit of the days when Mu- 
nich used to applaud the flower of Bavarian nobility 
breaking lances in the lists below, the pavement of 
which is now littered with the charcoal and the cru- 
cibles of the royal mint. 

About the palace itself there hangs little of the 
atmosphere of olden days. For each ruler of the 
long line felt it his duty to add to, subtract from, 
multiply, and divide this huge complex, until the 
medieval was almost eliminated, and many of the 
later portions became unimpassioned echoes of 
French or Italian prototypes. For all this, there are 
a few parts of the palace that delightfully reflect the 
Munchener. "Wherever the garment of foreign 

316 




COURT OF THE HOFBRAUHAUS (ROYAL. BREWERY) 



MUNICH-A CITY OF GOOD NATURE 

style did not quite come together," as Weese quaintly 
says, "the honest German skin peeped through." 

In the long, formal sweep of the western f acade, 
for example, a bronze Madonna stands in a niche 
above an ever-glowing light, a tender German motif 
borrowed from the highland farmhouse, with its 
wooden patron saint. 

In the Grotto Court one comes suddenly on a de- 
lightful instance of Bavarian charm — a vivid fleck 
of soft turf full of water-babies on ivied pedestals 
surrounding a fountain of Perseus worthy of the 
streets of old Augsburg. The plashing of the water, 
the cool greens and yellows of the palace walls, the 
perfect patina of the sculptures, the fantastic shell 
grotto at one end — all make a pleasant contrast to 
the monotonous splendors of the long festal suites 
within. 

In the Fountain Court there is less of dreamy 
charm and more of the carnival spirit. On a jolly 
rococo pedestal of mossed stone poses Otto the 
Great, with his eye on the crowd of frivolous water 
deities below, among whom are the genii of the four 
rollicking rivers of Bavaria. They have that lovely 
iridescence which seems to thrive best on the bronzes 
of Munich, and which is specially brilliant on the 
Little Red Riding-Hood fountain in the Platzl. 

The archway leading to the Chapel Court contains 

319 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

some reminders of the good old days. Chained to the 
earth is a black stone weighing about four hundred 
pounds. A rhymed inscription relates how, in the 
year 1490, Duke Christopher picked it up and 
"hurled it far without injuring himself." This is 
the same hero who, at the corner of the Marien- 
Platz called Wurmeck, killed a dragon that was ter- 
rorizing the town. It seems that the good duke was 
in love with a beautiful and popular daughter of the 
people, and that he agreed with his two rival suitors 
to hold a sort of field-day and let the best man win 
the maiden. The first event was putting the stone, 
and Christopher won. The second was hitch-kick- 
ing, and three nails in the wall immortalize the three 
astonishing records. The inscription proceeds: 

Drey Nagel stecken hie vor Augen, 
Die mag ein jeder Springer schaugen, 
Der hochste zwolf Schuech vun der Erdt, 
Den Herzog Christoph Ehrenwerth 
Mit seinem Fuess herab that schlagen. 
Kunrath luef bis zum ander' Nagel, 
Wol vo' der Erdt zehnthalb Schuech, 
Neunthalben Philipp Springer luef, 
Zum dritten Nagel an der Wandt. 
Wer hbher springt, wird auch bekannt. 

(Before your eyes protrude nails three 
Which every jumper ought to see. 
The highest, twelve shoes from the earth, 
Duke Christopher, a man of worth, 

320 



MUNICH-A CITY OF GOOD NATURE 

Kicked from its proud position there. 
Conrad leaped up into the air 
Unto the second — ten shoes steep. 
Unto the third — Phil Springer's leap — 
Was nine and a half shoes from the ground. 
Who higher leaps will be renowned. ) 

The poet Gorres concludes a lyric on this event with 
the apposite wish: 

Und moge unsern Fiirsten all 

Der Hebe Gott verleihn 
Aus jeder Noth den rechten Sprung 

Und Kraft f iir j eden Stein. 

(And may the dear Lord to each one 
Of all our rulers loan 
Skill to leap out of every ill 
And strength for every stone.) 

Where within palace gates is to be found a more 
striking memorial of good-fellowship between ruler 
and subject? 

In its ground-plan, in its monumental f acades and 
its long flights of festal chambers, the palace shows 
a simple, reposeful breadth that is characteristic of 
the city and its people. It is the sort of breadth that 
one looks for in the work of great artists. And one 
imagines that there has entered into the Munchener 
something of the generous, free spirit of his marbles 
from iEgina, of his Titian canvases, and of the calm 
strength of his hills. 

321 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

He is built on large, deliberate lines — a person not 
to be hurried or crowded. His speech is broad and 
slow, and even his graves are set unusually far from 
one another. 

This large quality is specially marked in Munich's 
four monumental streets. The Brienner-Strasse 
takes its stately way from the portal of the Royal 
Gardens to the Konigs-Platz, a square the simple 
majesty of which might suggest the Athenian 
Acropolis. In front is the Doric dignity of the Pro- 
pylaea, erected to celebrate in advance Bavaria's ill- 
fated attempt to shake Greece free of Turkey. On 
each hand are Ionic and Corinthian temples, devoted 
respectively to sculpture and the Secessionist school 
of painting. Between these serene, broadly modeled 
buildings lie only stretches of turf and roadway. 

The great simplicity of such a scene is exagger- 
ated in the Ludwig-Strasse into monotonous auster- 
ity, especially where the hard Roman Arch of 
Triumph, the cloister-like university, the Ludwig 
Church, and the public buildings line up their dreary 
facades. But, in spite of these, it is an imposing 
street. It shows at its best when the sun of early 
afternoon slants down to correct its horizontal lines, 
or when, at sunset, every homely westward road be- 
comes a flaming way to some enchanted castle, and, 
behind the Hall of Generals, the tower of the New 

322 



MUNICH-A CITY OF GOOD NATURE 

Rathaus changes in the glow to a tower of quick- 
silver. The southern end of the Ludwig-Strasse is 
most delightful at noon, when the military band 
plays and the gay crowd comes to promenade and 
see the Royal Guard relieved. 

These newer parts of Munich have been called the 
Wittelsbachs' note-book of travel, where they have 
recorded in stone and bronze their deepest impres- 
sions of other lands. In the Konigs-Platz they wrote 
down their love of Greece, and their love of Italy in 
the Odeons-Platz. 

The Hall of Generals is a copy of the Florentine 
Loggia dei Lanzi; the church of the Theatines on 
the right was modeled after the Church of S. Andrea 
della Valle in Rome ; on the left, the western f acade 
of the palace is typically Italian, while the southern 
was actually copied from the Pitti Palace. The very 
pigeons graciously peck corn from the palms of 
American tourists in the accepted Venetian manner. 
One sees over the foliage of the Royal Garden the 
iridescence of the Army Museum's dome and the 
lordly tower of St. Anna's, and involuntarily glances 
about, wondering why there are no dark-skinned folk 
sipping their wine on the sidewalk ; why no forms in 
roseate rags lie asleep on the steps of the loggia, and 
why no melting voice and prehensile fingers are 
touching one's heart and sleeve for ee un soldo!" 

323 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

Though the Maximilians- Strasse is unfortunate 
architecturally, yet there is the same grand manner 
in its round- arched buildings, and something nobly 
commanding in the way the Maximilianeum domi- 
nates the city from among the gardens across the 
Isar. 

With its splendid new home for Wagnerian music- 
drama and its National Museum, the modern Prinz- 
regenten- Strasse, laid out by some inspiration in a 
gentle, medieval curve, shows that the city is not lag- 
ging behind her traditions. 

The best exemplar of this quality of reposeful 
breadth, the Church of Our Lady, is exemplar also 
of another leading trait of Munich — her deep relig- 
ious spirit. In fact, these simple, massive walls, 
adorned outside and in with quaint and beautiful 
carvings and paintings, seem to epitomize the whole 
Munchener. Some of the tombstones, like that of the 
blind musician, are even suffused with a kindly hu- 
mor; and around the mausoleum of Emperor Lud- 
wig the Bavarian, a worthy companion piece to 
Maximilian's tomb at Innsbruck, one may see the 
love these warm-hearted people still bear to one who 
made Munich's fortunes his own. Among the many 
legends that cluster here is one of this emperor, who 
was found, centuries after his death, in the crypt un- 
der the mausoleum, sitting upright on his throne, as 

324 



MUNICH-A CITY OF GOOD NATURE 

Charlemagne is said to have been found at Aix-la- 
Chapelle. 

There is a black footprint on the pavement under 
the organ-loft at a place where a curious architec- 
tural trick has made all the windows invisible. There 
one is told how the builder of the church made a com- 
pact with the devil, who agreed to help him on con- 
dition that God's sunlight should be kept out of the 
building. The devil saw the windows growing, and 
was glad. "Come along with me," said he to the 
builder. "Come along yourself," cried the builder, 
and led him under the choir-loft. The devil looked 
in vain for a window, stamped his foot in impotent 
rage, and vanished. But his footprint has remained 
to this day. 

The builder of St. Michael's was less fortunate, 
for when he had completed the bold barrel-vaulting 
that spans the most noteworthy of German Renais- 
sance halls, it is said that he cast himself from the 
roof in despair, fearing that his work would not 
stand. This majestic church was built by the Jesuits 
to celebrate the coming triumph of the Counter-Ref- 
ormation. It was an eloquent prophecy of Munich's 
present Roman Catholic solidarity. 

St. Peter's is the oldest local church, and contains 
the choicest tombstones ; but the interior has suffered 
shockingly from the vandals of baroque times. 

is 327 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

These older examples of the Munich churches well 
represent the broad, simple, reposeful characteristics 
of the place. Certain younger ones, however, like 
All Saints', Trinity, St. John's, and the Church of 
the Jesuits, fairly sparkle, in their baroque and ro- 
coco finery, with the carnival spirit. 

The most noteworthy modern churches are the 
Court Church, a little Byzantine pearl of a place that 
transports one in a breath to the atmosphere of the 
Cappella Palatina at Palermo; and the Basilica of 
St. Boniface, Ludwig's record of his most precious 
hours in Ravenna and Rome. But, of all the later 
churches, St. Anna's is my favorite. Built of rough 
coquina, its picturesque complex of gables, turrets, 
and spires grouped about the central tower is already 
finely weathered. The broad, walled terrace, the 
moated fountain borne on pillars, the deeply felt 
modeling of the facade, the portal worthy of some 
great medieval builder — all these blend in an ensem- 
ble the equal of which I have not seen elsewhere in 
modern Romanesque architecture. 

All these churches are real places of worship. One 
finds there the same spirit of fervor that one expects 
to find in Tyrol or Italy. And this is natural, for the 
city grew out of a religious institution near by, and 
its very name— Ad Monachos, or "At the Monks"— 
stamps it as the child of Cloister Schaftlarn. The 

328 




THE CHURCH OF ST. ANNA 



MUNICH-A CITY OF GOOD NATURE 

whole daily walk and conversation of the people is 
connected in some way with ecclesiasticism. They 
say of anything that moves rapidly: "It runs like a 
paternoster" ; of a heavy drinker, "He guzzles like a 
Knight Templar." A mild state of intoxication is 
called a Jesuitenrauschlein; while an unfortunate in 
the advanced stages is "as drunk as a Capuchin 
father." 

In Catholic communities farther north there is a 
strain of cooler intellectuality in the devotions of the 
people. Here all is emotion. In fact, until recently 
this lack of balance has had a grievous effect on Mu- 
nich's intellectual life, which can boast few writers 
of note. But it has, on the other hand, kept a warm 
place in the hearts of the people for romantic legends 
and superstitions. The Miinchener has clung so 
much more successfully to these beliefs than to his 
medieval buildings that the place gives the illusion of 
having more atmosphere than its architecture would 
warrant. 

The folk still call Tuesday and Thursday by the 
ancient names, Irtag ( day of the war-god Ares ) and 
Pfinztag, from the Greek for Fifth Day. 

On Twelfth Night they cast evil spirits out of their 
homes with a ceremony descended in substance di- 
rectly from the heathen rites of Odin. They move 
from room to room, sprinkling the powder of sacred 

331 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

herbs on a shovelful of live coals, and write up over 
every door with consecrated chalk the mystic initials 
f C fM fE. These letters stand for the three Wise 
Men of the East, Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar. 

This is of a piece with the conservative instinct that 
still continues the Passion Play in the neighboring 
village of Oberammergau. 

With their Bavarian zest m anecdote, the people 
love to tell of a basilisk which lived in a well on the 
Schrammer-Gasse opposite the present bureau of 
police. The glance of this medieval Medusa killed 
all who looked at it, until some German Perseus held 
a mirror over the well and let the creature slay itself. 

The local belief in witches and black art is wonder- 
fully persistent. Tales are still current of spirits 
who took the form of black calves and could be out- 
witted only by being banned into a tin bottle with a 
screw-top. There is the legend of an unprincipled 
lawyer who died and was laid out in the usual way 
with crucifix and candles. All at once two black ra- 
vens appeared at the window, broke the pane with 
their beaks, and flew away again with a third raven 
which suddenly appeared from within the chamber of 
death. The candles were quenched in a trice, the cru- 
cifix overturned, and the lawyer's corpse turned as 
black as night. 

Then there is the favorite story of Diez von Swin- 

332 



MUNICH-A CITY OF GOOD NATURE 

burg, a robber knight who, with four of his men, was 
caught and condemned to death. Diez begged in 
vain for the lives of his comrades. Finally he cried : 
"Will you, then, spare as many as I run past after I 
have been beheaded?" With contemptuous laughter 
the request was granted. 

Diez placed his men in a line, eight feet apart, with 
those he loved best nearest him. Well pleased, he 
knelt down. His head fell. Then he rose, turned, 
ran stumbling past all of his followers, and collapsed 
in a heap. 

People who cherish such beliefs do not easily give 
up time-honored customs, and Munich is still rich in 
romantic rites. During the plague of 1517, when 
half the city lay dead and the other half was stricken 
with despair, the Gild of Coopers gave every one 
fresh heart by organizing an impromptu carnival of 
dance and song in those terrible streets. Once every 
seven years, in honor of this act, the Schaffler Tanz, 
or Coopers' Dance, still takes place, the coopers 
dancing in their ancient garb — green caps, red satin 
doublets, long white hose — and carrying half -hoops 
bound with evergreen. 

Sad to say, the picturesque Metzgersprung, or 
Butchers' Leap, has been recently done away. After 
a jolly round of dancing and parades and a service 
in "The Old Peter," the Butchers' Gild would meet 

333 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

around the Fish Fountain in the Marien-Platz and, 
after elaborate ceremonies, the graduating appren- 
tices, dressed in calfskins, would leap into the basin 
and thus be baptized as full-fledged butchers. 

In this same beloved square the pick of all Munich, 
old and young, joins in the Corpus Christi proces- 
sion, which, gay with students' caps and banners and 
gild-insignia, winds from the Church of Our Lady 
and groups its rainbow colors around the old Pillar 
of Mary, where the archbishop, who has been pre- 
ceded by white-robed maidens with flowers and can- 
dles, reads the Scriptures. 

Despite its worship of the past, however, Munich 
is, on the whole, a progressive city. Its recent com- 
mercial strides have been astonishing. For a century 
it has led Germany in artistic matters. And that it 
still leads, is shown by its annual exhibitions of 
painting and sculpture, of arts and crafts, and by 
such architecture as the National Museum, St. 
Anna's, the building of the "Allgemeine Zeitung," 
and some of the new school-houses. 

The Isar Valley, Schleissheim, and Nymphenburg 
belong even more intimately to Munich than the 
Havel and Potsdam belong to Berlin. To wander 
through the fragrant woods and by the castles and 
quaint villages of the Isar gorge is to hear and see 

334 



MUNICH-A CITY OF GOOD NATURE 

the Miinchener at his best. For he is always taking 
a few hours off there, and is always laughing and 
singing and yodeling. It seems as though the happy 
creature cannot turn his face away from town and 
swing into stride without breaking into one of his 
hearty songs. 

The castle of Schleissheim was built, like St. 
Michael's and the Propylgea, to celebrate a future 
triumph. For Max Emanuel imagined that he was 
going to be elected emperor, and could not restrain 
his exuberance at the thought. Those splendid ba- 
roque halls never held his imperial court, for he was 
driven into exile before they were finished ; but they 
hold to-day one of the foremost Bavarian collections 
of paintings, especially rich in the old German 
school. The formal gardens, with their statues, 
vases, and tree-fringed waters, contrast pleasantly 
with the severe facades of the castle, and form a sort 
of prelude to the more generous scale of Nymphen- 
burg, the most lovable of all the many German para- 
phrases of Versailles. 

My first visit to Nymphenburg was on a perfect 
afternoon in late summer. I came into a circle of 
buildings almost a mile in circumference, a barren, 
baroque circle inclosing a cheerless waste full of ugly 
canals and ponds, where the lords and ladies of the 
eighteenth century, in their gondolas, used to ape the 

337 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

water fetes of France and Italy. There is all too 
little of the festal spirit left there now. 

But on the other side of the castle the atmosphere 
changed like magic. I plunged into a brilliant Ver- 
sailles, but a sweeter, more gemutlich one than any of 
my acquaintance — a vast garden that knew how to 
be at once formal and natural. There was a wide 
sweep of lawn where old women and bullocks and 
rustic wains were busied with haycocks among long 
rows of marble deities and urns. In the middle of 
the scene a fountain flashed high in the sunlight, fall- 
ing among rough rocks. Humorous lines of Noah's 
Ark evergreens stood attention. In the distance, be- 
yond a linden-flanked canal, were waterfalls; and 
one caught a glimpse of the misty horizon. Right 
and left, narrower lanes of foliage opened vistas of 
water-flecked lawns checkered with patches of sun- 
light. Far away gleamed little pools, as bright as 
pools of molten steel, and near one of them I came 
upon a dream of a summer-house called the Amalien- 
burg, one of the most delicate and radiant bits of 
rococo fantasy in the German land. 

Munich is so diffuse a city that it is hard to think of 
it as a unit until one has seen it from some high place. 
It was a revelation to me when I climbed past the 
chimes of "The Old Peter" to the town-pipers' bal- 

338 




THE NEW RATHAUS IN THE MIDDLE GROUND, AND THE TOWERS OF THE 
CHURCH OF OUR LADY IN THE DISTANCE 



MUNICH-A CITY OF GOOD NATURE 

cony. There lay the city as flat as a lake. To the 
westward was a jumble of sharp, tiled roofs, turning 
the skylights of myriad studios searchingly toward 
heaven, as though the houses were all bespectacled 
professors. Beyond the eloquent front of St. 
Michael's rose the court of justice in all its dignity, 
with the humorous annex which the murderer begged 
to see. The Church of Our Lady towered over old 
Munich, symbol of the warm South- German heart. 
Immediately to the north rose that "mount of mar- 
ble" the New Rathaus, a, reminder of Milan cathe- 
dral, in its dazzling, restless opulence, and with a 
touch of the theatrical manner seen beside the quiet 
comeliness and reserve of the Old Rathaus. Beyond, 
the Pitti-like f acade of the palace stood out against 
the soft leagues of the English Garden. Eastward 
the Maximilianeum's perforated front reposed like a 
well-kept ruin amid the luxuriance of its waterside 
park. The Isar, itself invisible, made a bright zone 
of green through the city ; and in the south, crowning 
and glorifying the whole scene, the snow glistened on 
the far peaks of the Bavarian Highlands. 

A party of students had come up, and were gazing 
with affectionate eyes on their city. Quite without 
warning they burst into a song which I shall always 
associate with that tower and its glorious panorama: 

w 341 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

So lang die grtine Isar durch d' Miinchnerstadt noch geht 
So lang der alte Peter auf 'm Peter's-Platz noch steht, 
So lang dort unt' am Platzl noch steht das Hofbrauhaus, 
So lang stirbt die Gemutlichkeit in Munchen gar net aus. 

Freely rendered : 

So long as through our Munich the Isar rushes green, 
So long as on St. Peter's Place Old Peter still is seen, 
So long as in the Platzl the Court-brew shall men nourish, 
So long the glowing, kindly heart of Munich-town shall 
flourish. 



842 




XI 
AUGSBURG 

MONG the romantic cities of southern 
Germany there are few more striking con- 
trasts than Augsburg and Rothenburg. 
The former is a proud, patrician place, 
once the host of emperors and the home of 
famous financiers. It spreads out on a level plain its 
monumental streets, its palaces, its great public 
buildings and churches. 

The other is a city of dreams crowning a fair hill ; 
a quiet plebeian town, the tower-studded ring-wall of 
which has preserved more jealously than any other 
city wall the aspect and the atmosphere of old Ger- 
many. 

Just as one pauses at Goslar to modulate one's 
journey from the Harz to Hildesheim, so, in coming 
from the morning brilliance of nineteenth-century 
Munich, it is well to pause at Augsburg, where ro- 
mance and brilliance are blent as in some sunset sky, 
before climbing from the valley of the Tauber to the 

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ROMANTIC GERMANY 

hill-crest that is comparable only to those cloud-cities 
we sometimes discover when the moon rides high on 
a spring evening. 

When, with this idea of modulation, I last stopped 
at Augsburg, it was not to hunt up the scores of fas- 
cinating tombs and altars in the churches, or to visit 
the old German painters in the gallery, or to study 
the style of Elias Holl's architecture, or to make the 
rounds of all the interesting old houses. I wished to 
catch again the unique feeling of the place — the at- 
mosphere of proud Italian opulence that made its 
highways a fit resort for princes, combined with the 
native Old- World glamour of its intimate, homely 
byways. 

It was Sunday morning, and I sought the cathedral, 
a building too old, on the whole, to participate archi- 
tecturally in Augsburg's grand manner. At the Diet 
of 1530, the famous Augsburg Confession was pre- 
sented to the Emperor in the episcopal palace oppo- 
site. And legend relates that Martin Luther, fleeing 
from one of these diets after dark, in fear of his life, 
lost his way in the St. Gallus-Gasschen, whereupon 
the devil came and pointed out a little gate in the city 
wall, with the words, "Da hinab." ("Down there.") 
The Reformer went, and found a saddled ass and a 
servant to help along his flight. The evil one de- 

344 







THE NORTH PORTA1 OF THE CATHEDRA! 



AUGSBURG 

parted chuckling, feeling that he had done a deed 
worthy of his reputation. And the place is called 
Dahinab to this day. 

The cathedral nave was crowded with rapt wor- 
shipers. I stood near the four altarpieces painted 
by that famous Augsburger, the elder Holbein ; and 
looking from them to the rows of earnest faces, I 
realized that these conservative people had not 
changed even the type of their features for over four 
hundred years. 

Here were anachronistic costumes as well — peas- 
ant women with limp black head-dresses, gay neck- 
erchiefs of white and rose and yellow, flaming short 
skirts of blue, pleasantly overlaid with buff aprons. 
And there were short- jacketed Holbein men who 
wore odd silver coins for buttons. 

Orchestra, organ, and choir made sonorous music 
in the Gothic balcony. The officiating clergy showed 
splendid in their gold and silver vestments against 
the sculptures and the delicate pinnacles of the high 
altar. The priceless old stained glass of the clear- 
story painted the sunlight, and the great windows 
of the southern aisle sang a psalm of ultramarine and 
emerald and old gold. Despite its modest architec- 
ture, the nave took on a splendor that Sunday morn- 
ing like the splendor of Amiens. It was the authen- 
tic spirit of old Augsburg making itself felt. 

347 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

I paid a visit to the cloisters, with their wealth of 
tombs and quaint Latin. A goodly wash was spread 
out to dry on the lawn, tempting my companion into 
a pale pun about the "cathedral close.' ' And far 
above them was another sight almost as homely — the 
north steeple, with its crude, tiny Romanesque 
arches. 

The ancient bronze doors of the southern portal 
remind one of Bishop Bernward's epoch-making 
doors at Hildesheim, only these are more delicate and 
sophisticated, and have less of the elemental thrill. 

The most imposing part of the cathedral architec- 
ture is the northern portal ; and here the South-Ger- 
man's Gemiitlichkeit and love of animals are charm- 
ingly displayed. Surrounded by an attentive 
company of prophets and sibyls, the Herrgott is lolling 
carelessly on a throne, with a sword between his legs, 
listening to King David, who is playing on a harp. 
All seem to be getting the greatest pleasure from the 
music. Below, a lot of baby bears are trying to push 
one another off a molding above naive reliefs of the 
Annunciation, The Death of the Virgin, and the Na- 
tivity, the last a scene at which little donkeys peep 
edified over the rim of a wicker basket. Above them 
all are three gargoyles which, though suffering the 
most violent pangs of some indeterminate complaint, 
are yet as lovable as the guffawing crocodile near the 
other portal. 

348 



AUGSBURG 

In the Fish Market, after church, I found another 
commentary on Augsburg's love of animals. One 
side was lined with rabbits peeping out of boxes, per- 
ambulators, and baskets like the donkeys on the por- 
tal; two sides were taken up with birds and puppies 
— the salesmen seeming really loath to part with them 
— while in the middle was a host of dogs in leash. 
About the only creature not on sale in that Fish 
Market was the fish. But there was no snarling or 
fighting, for the menagerie seemed as full of Gemiit- 
lichkeit as its owners. Peace on earth, good will 
toward man and beast, was the order of the day. 

On a wall near by was a curious relief of a one- 
armed man. A question to a vender of puppies drew 
about us a beaming circle of citizens, who listened 
proudly while the tale of the siege was retold. It was 
in 1635, when the Swedes had reduced the town to 
the point of starvation, that the immortal baker took 
his last loaf, climbed up on the parapet during a 
charge, and threw it to the enemy, declaring that 
Augsburg had more bread than it could eat. The 
baker lost his arm up there on the walls, but the 
Swedes lost heart, and in disgust raised the siege. 

This part of town, however, never long beguiles 
one away from its splendors with such homely things 
as puppies and bakers. Near by I discovered a 
stately campanile and the facade of a great Renais- 

351 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

sance building so imposingly Italian that it seemed 
less natural to call it the Rathaus than the municipio. 
And within was a room, the Golden Hall, able to 
compare with many of Italy's most opulent interiors. 
This Rathaus typifies the formal, splendor-loving 
side of Augsburg, and is the worthy center of a city 
three of whose daughters married princes. One is 
reminded of the remark of Emperor Charles V, after 
having seen the royal treasures of France: "I have a 
weaver in Augsburg named Fugger who could pay 
spot cash for all this." The building bisects that old 
Roman road, now, as then, the main highway through 
the town, formed by the Karolinen-Strasse and 
Maximilians- Strasse, a broad, proud way lined with 
stately palaces. Among them shines forth the fres- 
coed house of the Fuggers, those Rothschilds of the 
Renaissance, to remind one of an age when most of 
Augsburg's walls were gay with color, and when 
many of its interiors could vie with those of Italy's 
royal palaces. In those days a merchant named 
Welser, whose daughter had married the Archduke 
of Austria, fitted out a squadron single-handed to 
take possession of Venezuela. And one of the 
Fuggers is said to have taken a note of hand for a 
large sum and burned it on a fire of cinnamon wood 
before the eyes of his debtor, Charles V. The old 

352 



AUGSBURG 

Augsburgers always did things handsomely. It is 
pleasant to remember that Emperor Maximilian I, 
on leaving his favorite city near the close of his life, 
turned in the saddle for a last look and exclaimed: 
"Now God preserve thee, thou dear Augsburg! We 
have had many a good time within thy walls. Now 
we shall behold thee nevermore." 

The Maximilians- Strasse is broader than any 
other street in Old-World Germany, and its Italian 
atmosphere is intensified by the splendid fountains 
that punctuate it, which are surrounded by ara- 
besques of the ironwork for which Augsburg is fa- 
mous. 

One of these fountains, the Augustus, commemo- 
rates the German emperor who founded the city, and 
after whom it was named Augusta Vindelicorum. 
But the Fountain of Hercules, down near the Fug- 
ger House, in its eloquent power and grace and 
humor, has never been equaled in Germany, though 
its influence may be seen to-day from Danzig all the 
way down to Munich. 

While the imposing, public side of Augsburg is 
strongly Italian in quality, the intimate, romantic 
side is quite as German; and it was good to feel the 
sudden change in the Church of St. Ulrich. This 
church is supposed to occupy the site of the ancient 

353 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

Roman capitol, and there were excavated here those 
huge stone pine-cones which became the symbols of 
the municipality. 

A confirmation service was going on. The piers 
and aisles were decorated with white birch saplings 
that looked very friendly and human against the ele- 
gance of the large altars, and reminded one that he 
was in the land of the Christmas-tree and that sort of 
thing. As I entered, a group of little children, in all 
their touching German artlessness, was moving out 
in front of the congregation. The vast throng stood 
for some moments in a profound silence, then sud- 
denly burst into the most beautiful' congregational 
singing that I have ever heard. 

It was a fitting introduction to romantic Augs- 
burg, and I went away finally, to wander in a sort of 
day-dream among the maze of little brooks and 
canals that make the southeastern quarter so pictur- 
esque, where the dwellers in fascinating old cottages 
have had to bridge a merry little river to get to their 
own flower-gardens. Here Augsburg's greatest son, 
the younger Holbein, was born, and a wall is still 
there, covered with the colored arabesques that he 
drew in his sixth year. There was the quaint little 
Fuggerei, a town within a town, which one of the 
Fuggers built to house the local poor on condition 
that they pay a gulden a year as rent, and daily offer 

354 



AUGSBURG 

up to heaven "a paternoster, an Ave Maria, and a 
credo, for the help and comfort" of all Fugger souls. 

The best came last ; for as I turned into the Jako- 
ber-Strasse, there was spread out such a vision of 
Old- World Germany as I had not dreamed of find- 
ing in Augsburg, the portal of Italy. An unbroken 
array of old houses swung down into the distance, 
with gables lofty and low, sharp and blunt, severe as 
a pyramid, or undulating like a maiden's curls, glow- 
ing with all the colors of the sunset, full of shapely 
windows and flowering balconies and wooden saints 
enshrined, set off against the richly weathered walls 
and ruddy tiles of a huge tanner's tower; and, with 
their perfect rhythm, leading the eye down to where 
a Gothic gate closed the prospect with the mellow 
masonry of its arches and the vivid green patina of 
its pointed tower. 

The ideal place to take one's leave of Augsburg is 
beside the crumbling ramparts where, deep under- 
foot, the shattered marbles of the Roman city lie; 
where grasses clothe the venerable defenses of medi- 
eval days; and where beautiful old wall-towers, re- 
flected from the surface of a stream once lapped by 
the wild horses of the Huns, dimly foreshadow the 
glories the traveler is so soon to taste — the glories of 
a city that is set upon a hill above the Tauber. 



357 




XII 
THE CITY OF DREAMS 

S the small railway-carriage crept along, 
with- frequent stops, it began to fill with 
old-fashioned men, quaintly dressed, who 
uncovered and made courteous inclinations 
to all present. Every one began to say, 
'God greet thee!" to every one else. 

Last of all came a small, wizen figure in a low, 
round, black peasant's hat, abbreviated pantaloons 
of buff, and a short jacket trimmed with a double 
row of large stone buttons. He was simple, genial, 
very ancient, and in his thin white locks and kindly 
wrinkles he would have made Diirer surpass his por- 
trait of Holzschuher. More than once afterward I 
met him within his native walls, and his well-pre- 
served beauty came to be for me a living symbol of 
the place itself. 

The Rothenburger still keeps his conservative re- 
sentment toward such a crass new invention as the 
railway. It was characteristic of him that when the 

358 




THE MARKIS TOWER 



THE CITY OF DREAMS 

hateful thing had to come, he hid the station half a 
mile from his walls. 

After a discouraging walk between modern build- 
ings, I came finally to a round arch flanked by squat 
towers, passed over a water-filled moat, the very 
scum of which was more beautiful than ordinary 
scum, through a humpy gate-house, over another 
bridge, under a lofty, square tower inlaid with coats 
of arms, and found myself at length in the City of 
Dreams, so complicated is the approach to that en- 
chanted spot. 

Nichts gleicht an deutschem Zauber 
Dir Stadt im Tal der Tauber 

sang the poet — 

(No other German magic may avail 
To match thine own, town of the Tauber-dale) — 

and once inside the Roder Gate it is evident that he 
sang true. 

Right and left run the old city walls, and at a 
glance one knows that he is in the presence of a Ger- 
man Carcassonne. These walls are of gray stone, 
tinged with brown, and covered with a sloping roof 
of crumbling, orange-red tiles. Along the inside, 
supported by rude corbels and engaged buttresses, 
and raftered with low, worm-eaten beams, runs a 

361 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

gallery where one may walk (stooping a little, if one 
is so unfortunate as to be tall) nearly around the en- 
tire city. 

A few steps toward the center of things, and down 
the curve of a fascinating street, just beyond an old 
fountain and some particularly rustic-looking, vine- 
clad, half-timbered dwellings, I caught a glimpse of 
another arch spanning the way, crowned with a 
clock-steeple, and marking the course of the original 
ring-wall. 

Behind it rose the wonderful, saddle-backed Mar- 
kus Tower, bearing that most intimate symbol of 
Old- World Germany, a wheel for a stork's nest. 
And, like so many more of Rothenburg's choicest 
pictures, this one was closed by the lofty, distant 
tower of the Rathaus. 

To one who has never known Nuremberg, such a 
scene strongly recalls what he has imagined Nurem- 
berg must be like. But, as a matter of fact, this is a 
purer bit of Germany's most precious past than any 
that remains to us in fche metropolis of Middle Fran- 
conia; although it is true that- in the Renaissance 
Nuremberg surpassed Rothenburg in the matter of 
beauty as much as Rothenburg surpasses Nurem- 
berg to-day. As I lingered here in the Roder-Gasse, 
unconsciously humming fragments of "Die Meister- 
singer" and dreaming of the vanished days when all 

362 




THE RATHAUS (CITY HALL), THH OLDER PART HAVING THE TOWER 



THE CITY OF DREAMS 

men were artists and all artists were men, a charming 
adventure came my way. For I happened suddenly 
upon a brother german of Hans Sachs cobbling 
away under a gable inscribed thus : 

Im Hause meiner Vater 

Klopf ich allhier das Leder, 

Und mache meinen Reim dazu, 

Ich sorge nicht wer's nach mir thu\ 

(Here in the house of my paters 
I hammer and hammer on leather, 
And thread my rhymes together, 
Careless of imitators.) 

A few steps farther, and the market-place glided 
into view. 

I shall always remember the first glimpse of that 
forum where the different architectural styles har- 
monize as perfectly as the fusion of the Old Rathaus 
and the New, a combination in which the romantic 
Gothic has tried to smooth itself out and compass an 
approach to austerity, while the classical Renaissance 
has bedizened itself into romance with pinnacles and 
little dormer windows, with a decorative corner oriel, 
a stair-tower, and a perfectly proportioned, flower- 
ing colonnade. 

In the center is the Herterich Fountain, a tenderly 
wrought, poetic thing, as fit to be the center of the 

365 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

City of Dreams as the imposing fountains of Augs- 
burg are fit to adorn the monumental. street wherein 
stands the palace of the Fuggers." From the stone 
basin, carved with splendid grotesques, rises a pillar 
in gray and gold, bearing a figure of St. George 
lancing a dragon — the dragon Thirst, no doubt, for 
in the museum hard by is still to be seen the huge 
tankard which Burgomaster Nusch drained at a 
draught to save the lives of the town councilors from 
the infuriated Tilly. But I am not rehearsing the 
famous story of the Meistertrunk, for two reasons. 
In the first place, it has already been told a thousand 
times. In the second place, it was probably manu- 
factured out of whole cloth in the eighteenth century. 

Next door to the museum, on the Apotheke, a 
charming oriel window with a green- and-red-tiled 
roof serves as background for the fountain and as 
baldachin for an old saint. 

Happy is he who is allowed to visit the courtyard 
behind this Apotheke, where the Rathaus tower peers 
down upon its riot of roofs, its ivied walls, and its 
latticed gallery, reminiscent of the best courtyard 
galleries in Nuremberg. 

From all sides of the market-place run alluring 
streets and alleys which, taking a line from the bogus 
instruments of torture in the Straf Tower, pull one 
in seven different directions at once. 

366 




COURT OF THE APOTHKKH 



THE CITY OF DREAMS 

The Herren-Gasse pulled me the hardest, a street 
running to the site of the red castle that gave Roth- 
enburg its name and was destroyed by a fourteenth- 
century earthquake. Here the patricians lived, and 
the way is lined with courtly houses, many of them 
Gothic. In the Herren-Gasse I found a number of 
well-preserved interiors, with good old paneled ceil- 
ings and stucco-work. In front were interesting 
portals with sculptured coats of arms, and in the 
rear, idyllic little courts or wooded gardens. Num- 
ber 2 proved to be a medieval bake-shop, and near 
by was a time-honored wine-house with separate 
rooms for patrician and plebeian. 

Behind a lofty "stepped"" gable some one was 
playing a rondo by Mozart on a spinet-like piano, 
and the eighteenth-century music sounded as radical 
in that older atmosphere as would a Debussy tone- 
poem heard in the baroque quarter of Leipsic. 

Beneath the Castle Gate, over a bridge, and be- 
tween friendly, dunce-capped gate-houses, the way 
led into a small paradise of a park on a spur jutting 
into the valley; and here I first began to feel* the fas- 
cination of Rothenburg as a whole. Northward there 
was a splendid view of the western wall, brought out 
the more strikingly, with its towers and bastions, by 
the foliage of the hillside below. Eastward Rothen- 
burg built itself massively up about the Rathaus and 

369 

17 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

the Church of St. James. From where I stood the 
wall swept inward in a magnificent semicircle toward 
a southern pendant of the town, sown full of idyllic 
towers, and called the Kappenzipfel, or Cap-Tassel. 
This curious name was invented by Emperor Al- 
brecht. The citizens had long teased him for per- 
mission to include the rich Hospital of the Holy 
Ghost within the walls. "Well," he cried at last, 
"since your town looks already so much like a night- 
cap, you may as well make this the tassel." 

Deep in the valley below, the Tauber wound under 
its double bridge, which showed up in the distance 
like a fragment of Roman aqueduct. I thought of 
the company of crusaders who once rode down the 
zigzag hillside path* and across that bridge, bound to 
redeem the Holy Sepulcher; and of the innumerable 
bands of pilgrims the olden times had seen winding 
up that hill toward the city that more than all others 
resembled, and still resembles, Jerusalem, to adore 
the drop of the Saviour's blood treasured in St. 
James's. 

The Tauber sparkled on, past the tiny castle of the 
celebrated Burgomaster Toppler, with its moat and 
two-arched bridge; past the delightful old mill, 
creaking and groaning among its poplars; toward 
the Romanesque church and the wonderful lime-tree 
of Detwang, that gem of a hamlet which Vernon Lee 
selfishly wished to conceal from the world. 

370 




PORTAL OF THE OLD RATHAUS 



THE CITY OF DREAMS 

An old woman sat down on a bench near by, and, 
as a matter of course, gave me a hearty salutation. 
She had lived in Rothenburg for seventy years, and 
it had hardly changed, except that more strangers 
came all the while to enjoy it. 

Frau Weller invited me into her home, a minute, 
vine-smothered affair in the Herren-Gasse, quite 
overpowered by its aristocratic neighbors. I had 
begun to hope that she would bring out my old man 
of the train and present him as her husband. But, 
alas ! it developed that she was a widow and alone in 
the world. 

"Ja, da lebt man halt bis man stirbt" ("Yes, one 
just lives here till one dies") , she said simply. 

The tiny rooms had timbered ceilings and furni- 
ture of the Biedermeyer period. Frau Weller's 
greatest pride and joy was a porcelain clock with 
weights, and she brought out all the pathetic bright 
handkerchiefs of her youth to show me. Up doubtful 
stairs, almost too narrow for any but very frail hu- 
manity, I caught a glimpse of her fascinating attic 
full of fagots and rich gloom, with holes in the tiled 
roof through which soft white clouds were visible, 
sailing in the bluest of heavens. 

Old Frau Weller and I plighted our friendship on 
the spot, and I shall never again see the neighborly 

373 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

nose and chin of Judy without remembering mine 
hostess of Rothenburg and her sweet simplicity. 

With much pride she introduced her cat. 

"She is a direct descendant of the famous Kdtz- 
chen of Vorbach. What! Hast never heard tell of 
her? Well, it was this way: many years before I was 
born there was a plague of rats and mice in this 
neighborhood, and never a cat to be found. Finally 
the two hamlets of Vorbach and Detwang clubbed 
together and bought a cat from a peddler for two 
pounds of coppers. She was rented out by the day 
all over this neighborhood. That cat had so many 
opportunities that she knew not which way to turn. 
And to this day, if any one seems especially hurried 
and flurried, we tell him, 'You 're as busy as the 
Katzchen of Vorbach.' " 

Past the Church of the Franciscans, with its deli- 
cate Gothic spire and its wealth of interesting sculp- 
tures and inscriptions, I returned to visit the court- 
yard between the Old Rathaus and the New. There 
are great round arches upholding a goodly half-tim- 
bered facade. But its principal treasure is the cele- 
brated Renaissance portal. With its carvings in 
stone and mellow wood, and the old Putzenscheiben 
lantern still hanging over the steps, the portal seems 
to offer such promise of wonders within as no Ger- 
man Rathaus could fulfil, not even this one, with its 

374 



THE CITY OF DREAMS 

fine Kaisersaal, where the Meistertrunk play is per- 
formed every year, and with its ghastly underground 
torture-chamber and dungeons where Burgomaster 
Topler met his death. 

Near by, in the sleepy Kapellen-Platz, I found a 
fountain — a sort of step -brother to the one in the 
market-place — flashing away in front of a facade 
full of half -timber work as gracefully patterned as 
the choicest lattice-galleries of the courtyards. And 
it was a peculiar pleasure to discover an inscription 
facing this fountain that told of the time when Roth- 
enburg awoke to the conscious enjoyment of her own 
beauty : 

Der alten Kunst gar lang versteckt, 
Hab' ich hier wieder aufgedeckt, 
Dass sie nun lacht in neuer Pracht 
Und mir und andern Freude macht. 

(The art of old, so long concealed, 
I 've in such wise again revealed 
That splendors new smile into view 
To gladden me and others too. ) 

The White Tower, a souvenir like the Roder Arch 
of the original ring- wall, is happily framed from the 
town side by the Georgen-Gasse ; and the low arch- 
way, with the tower stairs creeping above it, reveals 
the distant Wurzburg Gate, with its background of 
foliage. 

375 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

Outside, near the Crown Tavern's curious relief of 
a girl feeding a stag with a spoon, one may best see 
how perfectly the venerable fortification melts into the 
street picture. The "White" Tower is slate-colored, 
brown, blue, gray, dusky red, and a roof falls sheer 
away from it with bright patches of red down to a 
captivating corner oriel. This building, with its bit 
of walled garden, was once the Jewish dance-house. 
Old Jewish baths are still to be seen in the cellars. 

From the Wiirzburg Gate, as from so many of the 
others, there looks down a stone face, probably the 
portrait of a would-be traitor ; and inside of the arch- 
way a mysterious profile is roughly chiseled — a pro- 
file about which one hears all sorts of contradictory 
reports. 

This northern part of the town wall is the best pre- 
served, for it was built according to the theories of 
Vitruvius, and is the foremost example of its kind. 
On its broad top the maidens dance after the festival 
play. Here my friends, two young American paint- 
ers, once gave their memorable Fourth of July cele- 
bration, and, after the fireworks, were carried home 
on the shoulders of the delighted inhabitants, an 
event that will doubtless be talked of in Rothenburg 
for generations. 

I walked to the Klingen Gate along the gallery. 
This passage has never been much used except for 

376 




FOUNTAIN IN THE KAPEELEN-PLATZ 



THE CITY OF DREAMS 

defense, but its deeply worn pavement is eloquent of 
the town's martial history. I found it the haunt of 
rope-makers, with hemp flying from their girdles and 
lodged in their flaxen whiskers. Many of the loop- 
holes were walled up, but through the open ones I 
caught rare little vignettes of flowering moat and a 
pleasant countryside in bloom. 

The Klingen Gate, with its side turrets, rivals the 
Stoberlein Tower, with its corner ones, for the dis- 
tinction of being Rothenburg's most beautiful tower. 
From the wall here a dark stairway winds down into 
the little Church of the Shepherds. 

Some centuries ago the local Jews were believed to 
have conspired to poison the fountains, murder the 
watch, and make Rothenburg in very deed into a new 
Jerusalem. But the shepherds of the neighborhood 
discovered and published the plot. As a reward, they 
were allowed, until late in the eighteenth century, to 
hold an annual festival in honor of this event. It 
began with a service in the little church, was contin- 
ued, crescendo, at the Lamb Tavern, and ended in a 
hilarious dance about the Herterich Fountain, in 
which any burgher who joined the dance was incon- 
tinently doused. 

I found a delicate oriel with Putzenscheiben at the 
corner of the Klingen- Gasse and the Cloister Court. 
The venerable cloister building had been turned into 

379 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

public offices, but an obliging official showed me that 
rare sight, a genuine medieval kitchen, and the finely 
vaulted refectory above, from the window of which 
could be seen, on a distant hill, the ruins of a robber 
castle beyond the border in Wiirttemberg. 

The Klingen-Gasse leads through a gloomy arch- 
way under the Church of St. James. It is a fit set- 
ting for the legend of The Poor Soul of Rothenburg. 
In olden days the burghers did not believe much in 
the devil, which angered that personage. Once upon 
a time when a peasant was passing under this arch- 
way the devil caught him suddenly and hurled him 
against the vaulting with great force. The poor 
body fell down again at once, but the poor soul re- 
mained sticking to the stones. You may see it there 
to-day. "It is sort of brown," writes the chron- 
icler, "with black spots." 

On the southern roof of the church is a reclining 
figure which recalls another legend. In building the 
two towers the architect let his pupil try his hand at 
one of them. And when he saw how much his pupil's 
tower outshone his, he leaped to his death from the 
scaffolding. The pupil then carved his master's por- 
trait on the roof. 

The architecture of the interior is rather more cold 
and austere than one would expect of Rothenburg's 
principal church ; but there is a compensatory richness 

380 




THE KLINGEN-GATE TOWER 



THE CITY OF DREAMS 

of imagination in the altars by Herlin and Riemen- 
schneider and in the blaze of color that pours through 
the fifteenth-century windows. Here also is a touch 
of that naivete which is so enjoyable in the local 
house inscriptions. For the eastern windows repre- 
sent the Fall of the Manna as a rain of South- Ger- 
man rolls and pretzels. 

Of all the alluring ways beckoning out of the mar- 
ket-place, one of the most alluring to me was the 
Schmied-Gasse, with its view of that notable Renais- 
sance dwelling, the Architect's House. The caryatids 
between the windows with their reminiscence of the 
Erechtheum, and the stately portal and gable, bring 
out vividly the classical dignity and poise of the 
period, while the courtyard is teeming with Rothen- 
burg's unique charm. There you may loll at tables 
made of old millstones, with moss and flowers grow- 
ing from the hole in the center, and sip your coffee 
from earthenware cups of the quaint local pattern. 
That is the place to loaf and invite your soul while 
vaguely enjoying the carved shields and window- 
frames, the iridescent window-panes, the colors and 
patterns of the half -timber work, and the red gal- 
leries smothered in flowers. As you sip and dream, 
you begin to wonder whether it is not all too good to 
be true ; whether the curtain will not suddenly clatter 
down on this astonishing stage and the orchestra be- 

18 383 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

gin to scrape and toot, for your sins, the popular rag- 
time of the moment. 

A few steps southward, between the upper and 
lower Schmied-Gassen, I stumbled on a curious 
fountain, a mossy shaft capped by a hybrid figure 
with the head of a Gothic Christus and the tail of a 
merman. 

The lower Schmied-Gasse ends Am Plonlein, 
where the road hesitates and grows charmingly con- 
fused between the rival seductions of two gate- 
towers. It finally compromises by forking down 
crookedly on the one hand to the Cobolzeller Gate, 
and running up on the other hand to the Siebers 
Tower, which bears above a Romanesque arch just 
the proper touch of color in a sky-blue clock. Above 
the Gothic arch on the other side I made out a stone 
traitor staring blindly down the Cap-Tassel; and, 
in delightful contrast to him, the bright face of a 
young girl with a halo of flying flaxen hair peeping 
out of the embrasure above. 

The Cobolzeller archway framed a scene of the 
purest beauty, which came to typify romantic Ger- 
many to me as much as any one scene could. On the 
left rose the town wall, clothed with vines in all the 
colors of early autumn. On the right an arm of wall 
swept around, with the rich, deep tones of its wooden 
gallery, into the ruddy roof of a porter's lodge that 

384 




AM PLONLEIN— SIEBERS GATE AT THE LEFT AND COBOLZELLER GATE AT THE RIGHT 



THE CITY OF DREAMS 

nestled at the foot of a mighty, square tower. Above 
its roof was visible the onward sweeping rhythm of 
wall and tower, and, through the porter's archway, a 
glimpse of hillside foliage. 

Mounted on corbels in the courtyard was a half- 
effaced stone relief equally suggestive of a Roman 
sacrificial procession and of an early Gothic pro- 
cession to Calvary, so much can Nature do toward 
leveling religious differences. It came to me how 
Cobel, the neighboring hermit for whom the gate 
was named, would have been scandalized at such 
an ambiguity. 

I walked outside the wall to look through the arch 
of the Lime Tower and see how majestically the city 
composed itself from there; then went within for a 
few moments beside the huge mill where two-and- 
thirty horses used to grind Rothenburg's grain in 
time of siege. 

Then on to the hospital inclosure, with its crowd of 
quaint buildings and its rustic atmosphere. Near a 
fragment of pond the pointed Hegereiter House 
squatted like some mysterious but kindly gnome, as 
though caricaturing the beautiful Stoberlein Tower 
hard by. 

The Spital Gate with its involved complex of 
courts and towers and bastions seemed the most 
elaborate of the outworks of Rothenburg. Anti- 

387 



ROMANTIC GERMANY 

quated cannon still looked through the loopholes, as 
though to confirm the legend on the keystone of the 
outermost arch: 

Pax intrantibus, 
Salus exeuntibus. 

(Peace to the entering, 
Safety to the departing.) 

I had long heard of the glories of the "red city" 
seen toward dusk from the heights across the Tauber, 
when the flaming west made the roofs and tile- 
capped towers glow like a sunlit beaker of ruby wine. 
And each afternoon I had taken my way across the 
double bridge and past the old heathen place of sacri- 
fice to the hillside opposite, hoping for perfect 
weather. But though the sky, during my stay, 
steadfastly refused to "blossom in purple and red," 
I had the chance to see how well Rothenburg could 
endure the ordeal of a colorless sunset. 

The distant city made exactly the setting one 
would desire as the background for the most roman- 
tic story in the world. And I recalled with pleasure 
a passage from the memoirs of Ludwig Richter, that 
pioneer of romanticism: "Touring through Bavaria, 
I discovered a town which made one exclaim: 'This 
looks as if it had been designed by Ludwig Richter.' 
Here, for once, reality had equaled the most radiant 

388 



THE CITY OF DREAMS 

work of the imagination. The dozens of distant tow- 
ers stood out in lively contrast to one another over 
the mellow, ruddy city that sat its hill with a gra- 
cious, genial air far removed from the frightened 
way that little Italian towns cling to their heights — 
towns which Carducci once compared to flocks of 
mountain goats terrified by wolves. Against the 
light background of the western wall a line of regu- 
larly shaped trees gave the effect of a Gothic colon- 
nade. 

All about me was peace. It was the season of the 
hay harvest. I could not see the laborers beyond the 
western ridge — only the forks of green grass that 
came tossing rhythmically up over the sky-line. A 
sickle of moon stood over the wain, and I could hear 
the harvest song. 

One after one the far-away steeples rang out the 
hour of eight. And, as the sounds came floating 
across the valley, mingled with the low, delicate 
color-harmony of Rothenburg, I was glad that Na- 
ture had not seen fit to paint the rose. 



389 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Albrechtsburg Castle, Meissen, 263, 

267-270 
Arthurian legends, 10 
Augsburg : 

Atmosphere of Italian opulence, 
344 

Cathedral, 344 

Church of St. Ulrich, 353 

Fountain of Hercules, influence in 
Germany, 353 

Fuggers, The, 352 

Holbein's birthplace, 354 

Old houses, 357 

One-armed man, Story of, 351 

Rathaus, 352 

Babelsberg Castle, 102, 103 

Barbarossa, 189 

Beethoven, Klinger's statue of, 257 

Berlin: 

Administration of municipal af- 
fairs, 92 

Architecture, 42, 46, 53, 62, 71, 
79, 89 

Brandenburg Gate, 40, 43, 53 

Castle, 53, 54, 55, 58 

Castle Bridge, 49 

Cathedral, 54, 57, 60, 61, 62 

Characteristics and manners of 
people, 80-92 

Charlottenburg Castle, 79, 82 

Churches, 71, 73 

City an embodiment of Hohen- 
zollern character, 42 

Climate and character of people, 
95 

Column of Victory, 74 

Elector's Bridge and statue, 54, 
55 

Fountain of Neptune, 43 

Frederick Bridge, 60, 61 



Berlin: (Continued) 

Friedrich-Strasse, 72 

Gendarmen Markt, 73 

Heine and Hoffmann tablets, 73 

Historical notes, 66, 67, 93 

Janowitz Bridge, 70 

Kaiser Friedrich Museum, 64 

Krogl, its romantic atmosphere, 
68, 87 

Landwehr Canal, 97 

Latin Quarter, 72 

Leipziger-Strasse, 73 

Lustgarten, 50 

Military Museum, 49 

Mottos, 53 

Museums and the genius of Dr. 
Bode, 62, 63, 64 

Musical riches, 48 

Napoleon's hat in museum, 49 

National Gallery, 61, 63 

New Museum, 63 

Old Museum, 50, 51, 63 

Opera-house, 48 

Parks, 78, 79 

Pergamon Museum, 64 

Pictures, 42, 49, 58, 64, 65 

Reichstag, 74, 75 

Royal Theater, 48 

Sieges-Allee, 77 

Spree, The, 66, 71 

Statues, 42, 45, 49, 50, 53, 54, 63, 
64, 66, 74, 77, 78 

Tiergarten, 78, 82 

Unter den Linden, 45 

Virchow Hospital, 47 

Wilhelm-Strasse, 74 

Zeughaus, 49 

Zoological Garden, 79 
Berlin University, 47 
Bismarck monuments, 77 
Bismarck's wit, 84 



393 



INDEX 



Brunswick: 

American history, 153 
Architecture, 151, 154, 157, 159, 

166, 173, 175, 176 
Beliefs and customs, 145 
Bell-houses, 176, 179 
Burg-Platz, The, 154 
Carvings, 158 
Cathedral, 169 

Characteristics of people, 143 
Churches, 169, 170, 173, 175 
Compared with other cities, 179, 

180 
Courts, 160, 168 
Democratic spirit, 151, 152 
Fountain of Henry the Lion, 172 
Fountain of TyllEulenspiegel,141 
Gothic houses, 157 
Henry the Lion, 166, 169, 172 
Historical notes, 153 
Name, Change in, 151 
Old town market, 150 
Pictures, 165 
Squares, 163 
Stone rooms, 160 
Street plan, 157 
Superstitions, 145 
Tyll Eulenspiegel, Town of, 141 

Ceiling, Painted wooden, Hildes- 

heim, 211 
Charlottenburg Castle, 79, 82 
Charlottenhof Castle, 130 
Christ Pillar at Hildesheim, 205, 

211 

Dante and cloister-school, Meissen, 
267 

Danzig: 

Architecture, 4, 14, 18, 20, 24 
Arthurian legends, 10 
Church of St. Mary, 8, 24-31 
Court of King Arthur, 10, 11 
Crane Gate, unique landmark, 4, 

5, 32 
Dwellings, 13, 18, 20 
Fish market, 35, 37 
Fortifications, Ancient, 8 
Granaries, 31, 33 
Green Bridge, 4 
High Gate, 8 

Historical notes, 9, 10, 11, 17, 19, 
32, 33, 34 



Danzig: (Continued) 

Jopen-Gasse, finest street vista, 
23 

Langgasser Gate, 8, 9 

Long Bridge, 33 

Milk-can Gate, 4 

Mottos over doors, 19 

Napoleon's cannon-balls, 25, 31 

Navy, German, 33 

Pictures, 9, 12, 26, 27 

Poggenpfuhl, 22, 23 

Poland's protection, 10, 17, 19, 32 

Porches, Stone, 20 

Port of Poland, 32 

Radaune, 31, 37 

Rathaus interior, 9 

Rathaus steeple, 3, 4, 7, 9, 22, 38 

Sack-carriers, Haunt of, 37 

St. Catharine's Church, 31 

St. John's Church, 30, 31, 34 

St. Peter's Church, 22, 31 

Shakspere and "A Winter's 
Tale," 32 

Steffen House, Italian palace, 18 

Stock Tower, 8, 16 

Streets, Character of, 23 

Swan, The, 34, 35 

Teutonic Order of Knights, 10, 
17, 34 

Torture Chamber, 8 

Venice of the North, 7, 14 
Doors, Bronze, Hildesheim Cathe- 
dral, 205, 211 
Dresden : 

Augustus Bridge, 275, 292 

Bruhl Terrace, 297 

Castle, 288-291 

Characteristics of the Dresdener, 
293 

Church of the Cross, 280 

Church of Our Lady, 275 

City of Pleasure, 279 

Fairs, 274 

Florence of the Elbe, 285 

Frederick Augustus the Strong,283 

Gallery of paintings finest in 
Germany, 284-288 

Historical museum, 297 

Historical notes, 279 

Humor of, 292 

Name, Origin of, 279 

Royal porcelain collection, 298 

Zwinger, The, 283 



394 



INDEX 



Dresden Gallery, 284-288 

Emperor. See William II. 

Faustus, Doctor, 240, 244 
Frederick Augustus the Strong, 

283 
Frederick William, The Great 

Elector, 54, 57 
Frederick William I, Castle of, at 

Potsdam, 106-114 
Frederick the Great: 

Beside the coffin of the Great 
Elector, 57 

Castle at Potsdam, 110, 111 

Coldness and reserve, 84 

Last days of, 129 

Napoleon at tomb of, 57, 115 

Portrait as a child, 42 

Rauch's monument in Berlin, 45 

Ruins built at Potsdam, 136, 137 

Statue of, in his last days, 129 

Tomb at Potsdam, 115 
Frederick William III: 

Friendship with Alexander 1, 115 

Garden of roses, Famous, 101 

Statue of, in Berlin, 50 

Glienicke Castle, 101 
Goethe : 

Altarpieces of Cranach discov- 
ered by, 238 
Auerbach s Cellar in Leipsic and 
Doctor Faustus, 240, 243 
Goslar: 

Barbarossa, 189 
Brusttuch, 194, 195 
Clus, a grotto chapel, 196 
Heart of Henry III in chapel of 

St. Ulrich, 189 
Henry IV and his castles, 186 
Kaiserhaus, oldest secular build- 
ing in Germanv, 186 
Legend of the "Blood-bath," 191 
Name, Origin of, 192 
Remains of saints and apostles, 

189 
St. Ulrich's chapel, 189 
Zwinger, old tower, 192 

Henry III, Heart of, at Goslar, 189 
Henrv IV and his castles at Gos- 
lar, 186 



Henry the Lion, Brunswick, 166, 
169, 172 

Hildesheim : 
Altar by Fra Angelico, 207 
Architecture, 217, 223, 226-235 
Bronze doors, 205, 211 
Butchers' gildhouse, 225 
Cathedral, 201, 203 
Cathedral cloisters, 203 
Cathedral cupola, Story of, 207 
Christ Pillar, 205, 211 
Church of the Cross, 213 
Comparison with Brunswick, 199, 

213 
Houses, Noteworthy, 226-235 
Legends, 200, 214, 218 
Little Princess, Story of, 218 
Magdalene Church, 212 
Maid of Hildesheim, 214, 235 
Old German House, 215, 223 
Origin, Legend of, 200 
Pillar House, 228, 229 
Roland Hospital, 230 
St. Godehard's Church, 212 
St. Michael's Church, 208, 209 
Thousand-year rose-bush, 201,203 
Turn-again Tower, 235 
Wedekind House, 224 

Hohenzollerns: 

Berlin characteristic of stern 

qualities of, 40 
Characteristics, 47, 53, 78, 84, 91 
Face, Typical, 41 
Historical note, 106 
Music, Understanding of, 48 
Potsdam, playground of the H., 100 

Humboldt's Cosmos written at 
Charlottenhof, Potsdam, 133 

Isar Valley, 324 

Leipsic : 

Architecture, private baroque, 244 

Auerbach's Cellar, 240 

Bach, 249, 250 

Beethoven, 257 

Characteristics of people, 252-254 

Conservatory, Creation of, 250 

Fairs, 254 

Gewandhaus Orchestra, 250 

Goethe, 238, 240, 244, 245 

Naundorfchen, 258 

Origin, 261 



395 



INDEX 



Leipsic: {Continued) 
Pleissenburg, 251 
Princes' House, 237 
Publishing center of Germany, 257 
St. Matthew, Church of, 246 
St. Nicholas, Church of, 238 
St. Thomas, Church of, 249 
Streets with quaint names, 236 
Supreme Court building, 252 
Wagner's birthplace, 245 

Leipsic University, Founding of, 
268 

Lessing: 

Legend concerning, 147 
Princes' School at Meissen, 267 

Luther, Martin, Legend concern- 
ing, 344 

Marienburg, mightiest of German 

castles, 10 
Meissen: 

Albrechtsburg Castle, 263, 267- 
270 

Ascent of Souls, 267 

Church of St. Afra, 267 

Gellert and Lessing and the 
Princes' School, 267 
Meissen porcelain invented in Dres- 
den by Bottger, 284 
Munich : 

Beer, 313, 314 

Butchers' Leap, 333 

Center of arts and crafts move- 
ment, 313 

Characteristics of people, 306- 
309, 321, 322, 324 

Churches, 323-328 

City's symbol, 314 

Coopers' Dance, 333 

Dult, a biennial rag-fair, 313 

Festival in October, 309 

Galleries, 301, 302 

Gemiitlichkeit of Munich, 307 

Legends, 324, 327, 331-333 

Munchener's love of nature, 305 

Name, Origin of, 328 

National Museum, 302 

Palace, 316-321 

Panorama of city, 341 

Prophecy of Ludwig I, 300 

Streets, Characteristic, 322 

Wittelsbachs, Devotion of people 
to, 315 



Napoleon: 

Cannon-balls, Danzig, So, 31 
Hat in Berlin Museum, 49 
Visit to tomb of Frederick the 
Great, 57, 115 
Navy, German, birth at mouth of 

the Mottlau, 33 
Nymphenburg, 337 

Peacock Island, 101 
Pergamon Museum, Berlin, 64 
Porcelain collection, Royal, Dres- 
den, 298 
Potsdam: 

Approach to, 101 

Architecture, 106, 116 

Babelsberg Castle, 102, 103 

Charlottenhof Castle, 130 

Church of the Holy Ghost, 105 

Church of Peace, 119 

Cloisters, 119 

Dutch quarter, 105 

Frederick the Great's tomb, 115 

Gardens of Sans Souci, 120, 121 

Glienicke Castle, 101 

Historical notes, 105, 106, 129 

Legend, 106, 129 

Marble Palace, 102, 103 

Military life, 114 

Mill, Legend concerning, 129, 131 

New Palace, 133, 134 

Old Potsdam, 107 

Pictures, 109, 128, 129, 134 

Ruins built by Frederick the 
Great, 136, 137 

Sans Souci, 123, 126, 136 

Town Castle, 106-114 
Prussian, Meaning of word, 91 
Prussian Versailles: Potsdam, 100 

Reichstag, 74, 75 

Rose-bush, Thousand-year, at Hil- 

desheim, 201, 203 
Rothenburg: 

Architect's House, 383 

Cap-Tassel, 370 

Castle Gate, 369 

Cat of Vorbach, Story of, 374 

Church of St. James, 380 

Citv of dreams, 358 

Cobolzeller Gate, 384 

Comparison with Nuremberg, 362 

Courtyard of the Rathaus, 374 



396 



INDEX 



Rothenburg: (Continued) 

Hegereiter House, 387 

Herren-Gasse, 369 

Herterich Fountain, 365 

Klingen Gate, 376 

Legends, 380 

Lime Tower, 387 

Market-place, 365 

Markus Tower, 362 

Resemblance to Jerusalem, 370 

Schmied-Gasse, 383 

Siebers Tower, 384 

Spital Gate, 387 

Wall of the city, 361, 376 

White Tower, 375, 376 

Wurzburg Gate, 376 
Russo-German Alliance, Founda- 
tion of, laid at Potsdam, 116 

Sans Souci at Potsdam, 123, 126, 136 
Schleissheim Castle, 337 
Shakspere and "A Winter's Tale," 
Danzig, 32 



Sistine Madonna in Dresden Gal- 
lery, 285, 286 

Stained glass, Some of oldest, in 
existence, 190 

Teutonic Order of Knights, 10, 17,34 
Tyll Eulenspiegel, Brunswick, the 
town of, 141 

Venice of the North, Danzig, 7, 14 
Voltaire's apartment, designs by 
Frederick the Great, 128 

Wagner, Richard, house in which 
he was born, 245 

William the One-eyed, 268 

William I, Begas monument in 
Berlin, 50, 51 

William II: 

Architectural taste, 62 
Devotion of people, 41, 95 
Face, Character of, 41 
Sieges-Allee of Berlin, 77 



397 



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